This article is an attempt at
formulating a prescription for genius and creativity. In equal part, it
was written to inspire the bright ones as it is supposed to help those who consider themselves less
intellectually fortunate. In short, it will reiterate the claim that
training can do miracles to your mind. It will attempt to demonstrate that
a majority of population can reach today's standards of genius. It
will list nearly forty preconditions and fallacies related to genius and
creativity. It
will also attempt at presenting a simplified metaphor of genius for the
sake of demystifying the concept. Hopefully, it will also encourage
parents to spare no effort in providing rich and loving environment for
their kids to grow in

Intelligence, creativity and genius are generally regarded as highly
valuable assets of the human mind. As a strong positive correlation exists
between IQ and the median earned income, most people would gladly boost their
IQ, improve creativity or accept being called a genius. Exceptions to this
rule are few and most revolve around a claim that intelligence may be an
obstacle on the way towards universal happiness. Here are a few exemplary
arguments against human intelligence listed by the detractors of genius:

high intelligence reveals existential truths and as such is highly
depressive

high intelligence prevents atavistic enjoyment of relationships

high intelligence is a source of envy and other bad feelings in others

high intelligence leads to inhuman behaviors and most sophisticated
forms of evil

In this article, I will tacitly ignore the above claims and assume that you
would gladly become more intelligent, creative or innovative. I believe it can be
shown that an increase in knowledge and creative power can statistically leads to more "goodness"
(see: Goodness of knowledge). I will tacitly assume throughout
this text that achieving creative genius is
a desirable goal.

Many books on psychology put a substantial emphasis on the nature-vs-nurture
debate. Psychologist ask which factors are decisive in developing human
behavioral characteristics: genetic background or education and upbringing? As
far as intelligence is concerned, both genetics and upbringing determine the
final outcome. Using reductio ad absurdum we quickly notice that we have not
yet recorded a case of a success in science by an individual affected with
Down syndrome, i.e. we can easily show that genetics can stifle intellectual
development. At the same time, we notice that individuals deprived of
education and human contact may be deprived of the ability to read, speak or
conduct abstract reasoning, i.e. we can show that lack of education may be
equally devastating to the human mind (see: Feral
children).

The power of genetics on the functioning of the brain is illustrated by
afflictions such as Down syndrome (mental
retardation),
dyslexia (reading
problems), amusia (problems with recognizing sounds and music), unipolar and bipolar
disorders (depression and manic-depressive disorder), and many more. These
factors on one hand illustrate that we may at birth be handicapped in the
quest for genius. At the same time, behavioral therapies used in all listed
cases, show the tremendous power of training in developing compensation for
disability.

If you look at the human brain from 100,000 years ago, you
will not see much difference when compared with today's brains. Yet training and
education, as well as the ability to communicate and work collectively, has
lifted the human potential to unimaginable levels. See gray insets for more insights
on the potential and limitations of the human brain.

Throughout this article, gray inserts will
provide additional illustrative material. All inserts are optional! These are stories that can either
explain major points by example or simply serve as a source of additional inspiration.
The order of inserts is arbitrary. Each insert makes a separate and
independent reading. Some may require more knowledge in a given field
(e.g. biology, computing sciences, etc.). You do not need to read gray inserts to understand
the text. You can read all inserts now, later, or not at all

Of the inborn disorders that affect intellectual capacity, Down
syndrome is the most prevalent and best studied. Down syndrome is a term
used to encompass a number of genetic disorders of which trisomy 21 is
the most representative (95% of cases). Trisomy 21 is the existence of
the third copy of the chromosome 21 in cells throughout the body of the
affected person. Other Down syndrome disorders are based on the
duplication of the same subset of genes (e.g. various translocations of
chromosome 21). Depending on the actual etiology, the mental retardation
may range from mild to severe. Trisomy 21 results in over-expression of
genes located on chromosome 21. One of these is superoxide dismutase
gene. Some (but not all) studies have shown that the activity of the superoxide dismutase enzyme
(SOD) is
elevated in Down syndrome. SOD converts oxygen radicals to hydrogen
peroxide and water. Oxygen radicals produced in cells can be damaging to
cellular structures; hence the important role of SOD. However, the
hypothesis says that once SOD activity increases disproportionately to
enzymes responsible for removal of hydrogen peroxide (e.g. glutathione
peroxidase), the cells will suffer from a peroxide damage. Some scientists
believe that the treatment of Down syndrome
neurons with free-radical scavengers can substantially prevent neuronal
degeneration. Oxidative damage to neurons results in rapid brain
aging similar to that of Alzheimer's disease. Another chromosome 21 gene
that might predispose Down syndrome individuals to develop Alzheimer's
pathology is the gene that encodes the precursor of the amyloid protein.
Neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid plaques are commonly found in both Down
syndrome and Alzheimer's individuals. Layer II of the entorhinal cortex and the subiculum,
both critical for memory consolidation, are one of the first affected by the
damage. A gradual decrease in the number of nerve cells throughout the cortex
follows. A few years ago, the Johns Hopkins scientists created a
genetically engineered mouse called Ts65Dn (segmental trisomy 16 mouse)
as an excellent model for studying the Down syndrome. Ts65Dn mouse has
genes on chromosomes 16 that are very similar to the human chromosome 21
genes. With this animal model, the exact causes of Down syndrome
neurological symptoms will soon be elucidated (for the amazing genetic science in action see:
Cytogenetics
Resources Ts65Dn including pictures of "Down
syndrome mouse"). Naturally, Ts65Dn
research is also likely to highly benefit Alzheimer's research.

Whatever the actual molecular reason, over-expression of chromosome
21 genes puts children with Down syndrome at immediate disadvantage as
compared with normal kids.
Their IQ rarely goes beyond 60.
The brain of children with Down syndrome is usually small and underweight. The cerebellum and brain stem are unusually
small. So is the superior
temporal gyrus. Their intellectual potential is further limited by a number of
ailments such as recurring infections diseases, heart problems, poor eyesight,
etc. Genetics is a true roadblock here.
People with Down syndrome have (until now) never become great scientists,
novelists, politicians, etc.

At the same time, medical treatment,
conducive family environment, vocational training, etc. can increasingly
produce excellent improvement in the overall development of Down syndrome
kids. On one hand, Down syndrome shows that we cannot jump over genetic
limitations; on the other, it shows that intense training can produce
miracles whatever the starting point. In conclusion, the optimum path to
excellence goes via the mental training independent of genetic limitations

You will find many definitions of human intelligence of which three make
the most of the daily use of the word:

problem solving ability - the power of the human mind to
process information and solve problems. When you see a bright scientist
with wide knowledge and numerous discoveries to his credit, you may say: This
person is really intelligent! Look at his record! To use a computer
metaphor, the scientist is endowed with the best hardware and software
money can buy. He or she is optimally equipped for problem solving

processing power - the raw nimbleness and agility of the human
mind. When you see a smart student quickly learn new things, think
logically, solve puzzles and show uncanny wit, you may say: This guy is
really intelligent! See how fast his brain reacts! The student has a
fast processor installed and his RAM has a lightning access time. He may
though still need a couple of years to "build" good software
through years of study. IQ tests attempt to measure this sort of
intelligence in abstraction of knowledge. The difficulty of improving
processing power by training comes for similar reasons as the fact that
programming cannot speed up the processor

intelligence potential - the potential to develop intelligence in
senses listed above. When you see a young child that shows a number of
talents and seems to be on a straight path to become a nimble student or a
prolific scientist, you may say: This kid is really intelligent! The
sky is the limit for him. The kid is equipped with high quality
extensible hardware infrastructure. He is on the best path to reach
highest intelligence both in terms of processing power (Definition 2) and
problem solving ability (Definition 1)

In this article, I will focus on ways towards developing the intelligence
in the sense of problem solving ability (i.e. Definition
1). After
all, the whole purpose of education is to improve our problem solving ability,
i.e. the ability to optimally answer questions such as What to eat for
dinner? What job to take? How to build a better mouse-trap? What should my
position on abortion be? Which party should I vote for? etc.

High IQ is welcome but it makes up for only a fraction of intelligence (Definition
1). As much as a fast processor stands only for a fraction for what we
expect of a good computer.

Later in the article, I will argue in support for the scientifically obvious
statement: well-designed training
can produce amazing results in enhancing intelligence (Definition
1). However, this
statement is surprisingly little understood in general population. It falls
into the category of scientific facts that may find more skeptics than
believers. Naturally, vox populi does not detract from the merits of
evolution, genetic engineering, human cloning, Big Bang theory,
sociocybernetics, neuropsychological interpretation of the thought and
consciousness, etc. However, to make the obvious more digestible, I will use
the computer metaphor to illustrate the building blocks of intelligence and
genius

The neural network of the brain can be seen as mental hardware. It includes
inborn ROM memory as well as highly plastic RAM. The inborn
wiring and structure of the brain may roughly be compared to a ROM memory. If
you stop eating for a day, program stored in your ROM will make you experience
hunger. Things we learn
in life can be considered software that is stored in your RAM.

If you doubt a mental ROM exists try the following experiment: look at the
computer screen, keep your eyes open, stay conscious and yet try not to perceive
the picture of the screen. Seems impossible? Now try to superimpose the face of
a loved person by using the power of your imagination. This is easy for most
people. Here is your RAM in action superimposing over a ROM-enforced perception.
You can even imagine touching parts of the imaginary face. Yet the screen
underneath does not seem ready to go away. The impulses from the retina hit the
visual cortex, and you can do little about it.

Knowledge is encoded in the
modifiable strength of
connections between neurons in a similar way as bits are stored by electrical
charges in cells of RAM memory. Our software can roughly be compared to an expert
system.
An expert system is a software application that can be used in problem solving
such as producing a medical diagnosis. An expert system is built of two
components: factual knowledge and an inference
engine. They roughly correspond to data and software in a computer or to
knowledge and reason in the human brain.

Expert systems are computer programs that take over the job of an
expert in a highly specialized field such as medical diagnosis,
production management, criminal profiling, etc.. An expert system is fed
with data and it's job is to answer questions such as: "What is
the list of the most likely diseases the patient is suffering from?",
"Which supplies need to be ordered next?", or "Which
offenders in the database match the profile of the described crime?".
Expert systems provide an excellent metaphor for studying human problem
solving and provide clues for enhancing creativity.

An expert system is usually built of a knowledge base (collection of facts
representing factual
knowledge) and an inference engine (collection of rules
representing inferential
knowledge). An expert system may store facts such
as "E. coli bacteria is not resistant to norfloxacin"
and "E.coli can cause urinary tract infections". It can
also store updateable facts such as: "Pain during during
urination is associated in X% of cases with urinary tract
infection" (where X is a number regularly updated as the
expert system improves its knowledge), or "E. coli is a cause of
Y% of urinary tract infections". The expert system can also store rules such
as "If (A is an antibiotic) and (B is a bacteria) and (patient is
infected with B) then (suggest administration of A)". Some rules
can be fuzzy, i.e. applicable with a degree of probability or producing
a given outcome with a given probability, for example, "If
(patient infected with E. coli) then (probability of success with
norfloxacin is P%)" or "If (probability of E. coli
infection is greater than P%) then (use norfloxacin)". By
analyzing the facts stored in the database and facts fed into the expert
system, the expert system can use its inference rules to answer
questions on the optimum antibiotic therapy. It can also generate the
probability profile of the successful application of individual
antibiotics. Although the difference between static facts and if-then
rules in an expert system is very clear-cut, there is no sharp fact-rule
distinction in the human brain which uses neural representations for
storing knowledge. However, the difference between facts and rules is very
valuable in explaining the difference between smart
and dumb learning.

Expert systems are always based on storing large amounts of
information. They are built by peeking at human experts in action and concluding
about their reasoning. A knowledge engineer or an expert himself needs
to formulate the rules that are used in arriving at a solution to a problem.
Consequently, there is a very direct parallel between an expert system and a human
expert in action.

Much of expert thinking is much simpler than what happens in
a child's brain in the course of ordinary play! The reason for this is that we
are inborn with powerful computing machinery for visual processing, for
association, for analyzing motion, for spatial orientation, for
phonological analysis, for language parsing, etc. A child
recognizing a simple ba-ba language may be harder to imitate in a computer than
an expert botanist recognizing one of a thousand species of plant. As
Marvin Minsky put it: It can be harder to be a novice than to be an expert!
A program written in 1961 by James Slagle could solve calculus problems
that are normally given to college students. This program was able to
score an A on an MIT exam. This program needed only about a hundred
algebraic rules to solve all the required calculus problems! Calculus
permeates engineering and forms part of the foundation of the industrial
world. It is also a classroom nightmare to many students. Yet in essence it is
very simple and compact. Simplicity of calculus powerfully illustrates what our brains were
not born to do. It also shows what new powers our brains can acquire
with relatively little effort if the new knowledge is selected in the
right way. Algebra can serve as a model of abstractness of
rules. After
all, it is based on symbols that can mean anything: a plane or a bird or
just anything. As stated throughout this article, abstractness of
rules stored in the human brain lays at the foundation of creative
thinking.

What an expert needs to know can indeed be simple. However, it
is often not simple to discover or explicitly formulate it in the first
place. Many students may have problems with calculus because of the
simple fact that some rules of calculus are highly heuristic and cannot
be found in math books. Good (or rather hard working) students acquire
those rules implicitly by solving a large number of calculus tasks. Poor students
could easily catch up if their books or teachers explicitly formulated
those hazy rules, e.g. if you see those two symbols on the left, go
for the rule X rather than wasting time on the remaining five other
possibilities that can cost you an hour each. Human experts seem more intuitive than computers. But
this only comes from the fact that they apply rules that they themselves
have hard time formulating. There is no qualitative difference between
human or computer expert in that respect. Intuition is not a magic
power. Intuition is an inability to explicitly express knowledge that is
already wired in the neural network of the brain.

As with the haziness of the rules, similar uncertainty may
concern the actual
application of inference rules: the problem solving strategy. A creative
individual will often not be able to clearly say how and why he
or she arrived at the solution. When later writing a scientific paper on
the solution to the problem, the creator will often need to look for a
clear path towards the solution even though he has definitely arrived at
the goal before. Expert systems may use various strategies such as
data-driven derivation called forward chaining (going from the
facts to a conclusion, e.g. deriving symptoms from a disease database),
goal-driven derivation called backward chaining (going back from
the goal to test a hypothesis, e.g. testing for a disease given the
symptoms), search (applying simple rules repetitively over a large
number of combinations that could yield a solution), and various
combinations of these strategies. As for the problem solving strategy, the human brain is even harder to
simulate. Usually the search space for major problems is huge and no
simple strategy can be used (otherwise the problem would not be a
problem in the first place). Then the lucky genius stroke, the brilliant
association, insight, breakthrough, etc. is nothing else than applying
the right rule to the right data at the right time. The "right time" here
refers to the different states of the brain at different moments of
time. The brain works associatively and two
or more neuronal assemblies must be active at the same time for the
association to be formed. Archimedes could have thought of volume when
entering his bathtub before he yelled: Eureka! Newton's brain must have
been sensitized to gravity when he was struck by a falling fruit. James Watt must have
had his engine-power neurons potentiated when looking at a rattling kettle.
Millions of people see kettles daily but they rather do not think about
a steam engine as a result. The genius
breakthrough comes from an association of ideas in the brain. In terms
of an expert system, the right rule must be applied to the right set of
facts. The best term to describe human problem solving is heuristic
search. We apply available rules using the best-search rules which may
be subject to another layer of meta-rules that are implicitly interwoven
in the intricacies of the neural circuitry of the brain.

In conclusion, knowledge is the key to problem solving. In
particular, highly abstract inferential knowledge is central to a
creative search for solutions. The disassociation of the link between knowledge and genius can be
harmful. The confusion usually comes from the fact that memorizing
worthless data is not differentiated from memorizing useful rules. Many
people mistakenly fail to recognize the associative power of human memory and
conclude that relying
on external sources of information may suffice in their particular field
of activity. As a result, memorizing is
perceived as a dumb act. Some articles at supermemo.com
illustrate this problem:

In today's world, information
is so abundant and can be accessed so readily that it is hardly necessary to
lumber one's memory with it (from SuperMemo
is Useless)

It should be enough to create in our memory some sort of
an index to the global wealth of information (from No
force in the world ...)

The most important things we learn from expert systems is that
extensive knowledge helps solve problems. We also learn that the way we
represent knowledge may determine the successful outcome of problem
solving. Conclusions: we need to keep on learning and we need to
pay special attention to how we represent things in our memory to ensure
we understand the implications of the things we learn.

For a quick course on basic concepts of Expert Systems
and Artificial
Intelligence see: ABC
of AI

Factual knowledge is
made of facts. A fact may have a form of "Jimmy Carter was
elected the US president in 1976" or "Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865".
Inference engine is based on inferential knowledge. Inferential knowledge is
made of a set of rules.
Unlike static facts, rules can be applied to facts to produce more facts,
assertions, statements, theorems, formulas, etc. For example, a rule may say
"Since the 22nd Amendment, a US president cannot serve for more than
ten years" (i.e. two terms plus two years of possible succession).
From a fact "Jimmy Carter was the president" and from a rule
"President cannot serve for more than 10 years" we can derive
new knowledge: "President Carter served no more than 10 years".
In mathematics, a fact may say that x=3 and a rule may say that x+x=2*x.
By applying the rule to the fact we can conclude that 3+3=2*3. Rules can then be used to
derive new facts and new rules. If we know that x+x>x (for x>0) then we also
derive a new rule: 2*x>x. In the course of problem solving,
our brain will often develop new rules and store them in memory. These new rules
will form a highly valuable component of your knowledge and will decide on your
creative powers. Rene Descartes said: "Each problem that I solved became
a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems"

Apart from declarative facts and rules which we
can learn in a textbook, our nervous system also includes other forms of
knowledge. For our analysis we will mostly need to discern: inborn knowledge and
procedural knowledge. Inborn knowledge can be compared to rules stored in
our ROM. For example, when feeling a burning pain in fingers, retract the arm.
Procedural knowledge is knowledge that is acquired by trial and error via
punishment-reward stimuli. For example, when we ride a bicycle, each time we
lose balance, an information is sent to the motor system not to repeat the
recent moves that should be considered an error. At the same time, the elation
of smooth ride, reinforces the circuits responsible for sequential stimulation
of muscles involved in cycling.

Apart from inference engine, our brain is
equipped with a sort of "interference engine". Our brain was
programmed for survival. It is supposed to make you search for sources of water when you are
thirsty or react with interest to an attractive representative of the opposite sex.
We are driven by instincts and emotions. Emotions helped humans survive
thousands of years of evolution. However, emotions also interfere with the
intellectual effort. Isaac Newton might be the brightest scientific mind of the
17th century, yet the last 25 years of his life were marred by a bitter battle
with Leibnitz over their claim to having invented the calculus. Alan Turing, the
father of the famous Turing Test, committed suicide by cyanide poisoning under the
burden of intolerance brought forth by his homosexuality. His mind might have
been affected by a hormonal therapy that was supposed to "cure" him of
homosexuality. Even the greatest mind may be incapacitated
by a strong interference from hormones or lower-level brain circuits. Emotions
can literally kill genius.

Here is the summary of the computer metaphor of the human
mind. Terminology
defined here will be used throughout the rest of this article:

well-driven knowledgeable brain must avoid negative interference
from inborn weaknesses and destructive emotions (e.g. few things cloud judgment as badly as anger, and
few things are as distracting as love)

Using the "simplified brain model"
above, I will try to look for factors that determine a genius brain and how
these factors could be influenced.

A genius brain in action will tackle a problem, quickly find an appropriate
set of rules, and derive a solution. Actually, the speed of processing the rules is
not as critical as the skill in choosing the appropriate rules at hand. For a
genius breakthrough, the speed is usually quite unimportant. It took Darwin five
years to collect data during his Beagle trip to come up with a vision of the
evolutionary process. Yet it took him another 20 years collecting all necessary
material, and opinions before mustering courage to publish On the origin of species. The book has changed our view of the human
species for ever. It is hard to pinpoint a single breakthrough or a stroke of
genius. Darwin's reasoning wasn't blindingly fast neither. Yet Darwin's impact on the ways of the mankind was
monumental

Humans do differ in their brain power. Some get a biological head
start, others get handicapped from early childhood. In cannot be
stressed enough though that the optimum path towards maximum achievement is
always through
training. The starting point is not relevant for choosing hard-work learning trajectory. It is also important to know, that in majority of
cases, mental limitations can be overcome. Some major disabilities, such as
Down syndrome or brain injury can pose a formidable challenge. However, practice
shows that a huge proportion of the population see a problem where it
does not exist. Many people write to me about their memory problems just
to discover (e.g. with SuperMemo
analytical tools) that qualitatively their memory does not differ from their
peers. What usually prevents people from reaching intellectual heights
is personality and the environment (school, family, etc.). Many do not
live up to their potential simply because of insufficient motivation or
belief in their own powers. Others fail due to parental
inattention. Those factors are statistically by far more important than inborn
limitations.

Scientists have studied Einstein's brain to look for the clues as to
his genius. On cursory examination, they could hardly find any. Later it
transpired that some areas of his brain were indeed better developed
and nourished by a rich fabric of glial cells, i.e. brain cells that are,
among others, responsible for the right environment for neurons to work
in. Yet it is difficult to predicate as to whether all these differences
were inborn or were rather a result of his training in
abstract thinking.

Anatomical studies show that various areas of the human brain may
substantially differ in size between individuals. Yet it is not easy to
find correlations between these difference and mental powers. In people
with a normal range of IQ, the volume of cerebral cortex may vary twice
between one person and the next. So may the extent of differences in
metabolic rates in the same organ. Similar differences have been found
between such critical brain structures as the hippocampus, entorhinal
cortex, and the amygdala. Connections between the hemispheres can
dramatically differ in volume (e.g. seven-fold difference for the
anterior commissure). The left inferior-parietal lobule (located just
above the level of the ears in the parietal cortex) is larger in men, and
was also found to be larger in Einstein's brain as well as in the brains
of mathematicians and physicists. On the other hand, the two language area
of the cortex: Broca and Wernicke areas are larger in women, which may
explain why women might be superior in language processing and verbal
tasks. Bigger men have bigger brains but are not smarter.

A racially sensitive subject of lower SAT test scores among blacks and
Hispanics in the US has been a matter of debate for a number of years. The
differences could not be explained by the material status of families or
the neighborhood factor. Stanford psychology professor Claude Steele has
conducted revealing experiments in which black students could do equally
well on the test as long as they were not told they are being scored.

Although we can point to differences based on sex or ethnicity, the
ultimate difference in the creative potential is by far more dependent on the
upbringing, education and student's personality. As explained in Genius in
Chess, despite chess being a "male game", female chess
player, Judit Polgar, developed skills that are superior to those of 99.99997% of the male population.

When we tried to see if student IQ makes it easier to do well in
learning and in exams, we found that some personality
factors matter more. A small group of students learned with SuperMemo, and the main success factor was
the perfectionism trait, not the actual IQ (Wozniak
1994, Gorzelanczyk et al. 1998).
Most
optimistically, SuperMemo and memory
research show that our memory works in the same way at the very basic molecular
and synaptic
level. Our forgetting is described by the same forgetting curve whose
steepness is mostly determined by knowledge
representation. As the analysis of
success stories with SuperMemo shows, main learning differences between
individuals can be found in (1) personality (perseverance, delayed
gratification, optimism, etc.) and (2) knowledge representation skills. A
week-long course in mnemonic techniques immediately illustrates that knowledge
representation skills can be learn very fast indeed. Those skills also develop
in proportion to the amount of learning as demonstrated by differences between
primary, secondary, undergraduate and graduate levels. All users of SuperMemo,
unless primed beforehand, start with building clumsy collections of learning
material that is quite difficult to retain in memory. Within months, most
users develop reasonable strategies on how knowledge should be represented to
minimize the effort of learning (see: 20
rules of formulating knowledge in learning).

To produce breakthrough ideas, most valuable rules are those that are highly
abstract (i.e. detached from a particular subject matter). They should be applicable to a wide range of problems. This is why
various branches of mathematics should be taught to students of all professions.
Logic, probability calculus, or statistics are highly abstract and highly
applicable. The same formula of logic may be the basis of dozens of other highly
abstract rules. Surprisingly, many professionals find it hard to differentiate
between conjunctions such as AND, OR, AND/OR, or XOR. Let alone the difference
between deduction and induction which forms the basis of scientific
investigation, as well as the basis of logical (read "correct")
thinking about such simple choices in life as selecting the appropriate brand of
cereals for breakfast

Rule abstractness: If you learn the rule "Wheat contains 340
kcal per 100 grams" its is only applicable to wheat. If you narrow the
term wheat to a single concept (i.e. not grain of all species of plan
called "wheat"), this rule can be interpreted as a fact. However,
the rule "Most cereals contain 330-360 kcal per 100 grams" is
probabilistically applicable to both wheat and maize. The latter rule is more
abstract and statistically more valuable in problem solving (i.e. you can use
cereal rule in more circumstances than the wheat rule)

The applicability of rules does not only depend on their express meaning. The
actual representation of the rule in the human brain is paramount! The same rule
in the mind of a genius can find a dozen more applications than can be borne out
of an effort of a plain crammer. The skill of learning the rules the right way
is a critical component of genius. Genetic component may play a minor role here.
Many individuals find it difficult
to represent knowledge in their minds in a way that can lead to a genius
breakthrough. Understanding the right forms of training for abstract
representation of rules in the human mind may bring untold benefits to mankind
in years to come.

If we take this rule: "if HardDiskSpace<5MB thenraise(HardwareAlert('Running out of hard disk space')"

If you type this rule to MS Word and save it in a doc file, the rule
will be as useless as any rule crammed into your memory without understanding.
Yet the same rule encoded in a hardware monitor DLL can be a blessing to the
security of data stored in your computer. The way we represent rules in our
brain determines their applicability.

For the same reason, I started this article with a computer metaphor. This
way I tried to represent the foundation knowledge of this text in a form that
is easily understood by everyone. The rules I am expressing can hopefully be easier to
digest and store in your mind with a more tangible long-term benefit. With the appropriate
representation, no scientific theory is complex. All great theories were born in
the human mind.
Einstein, Turing, G or Heisenberg did not have to be inherently brighter than you.
However, they were able to arrange the pieces of the puzzle in their mind in such a way
that they could easily see the light. There is nothing inherently complex in the
theory of relativity, the theorem of incompleteness or the uncertainty
principle. Some theories may be more voluminous than others. Some may be
voluminous enough, in their digestible simple representation, to discourage many
from digging in. An important conclusion: No product of human thought is
inherently complex or incomprehensible. The difference between easy subjects and
difficult once can always be explained by the representation and volume.

Abstractness calls for particularly well-chosen representation. The fact
that dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago may require no special
approach. Abstract mathematics, on the other hand, may be introduced to a
student in a number of ways that differ in their effectiveness by many orders of
magnitude. There are many more students who fear algebra than those who tremble before a
literature class. Symbols of algebra do not have specialized brain
circuits to process and simplify them. Student problems with algebra can usually be
tracked down to insufficient
training in math at primary and secondary levels. Consequently, a motivation
factor builds up another inhibitory layer. The gratification from reading an excellent novel is instant. The
benefits of math require good command of the raw basics, starting with the
multiplication table and the sums. We have not been able to find many shortcuts
from the basic level math towards solving differential equations. However, yet a few
years ago, you could hear from many: Computers? That's not for me. I have
never been good at technical subjects. Today, the same people surf the net
for hours. Seniors are flocking to the net in droves. We have succeeded in simplifying the way people
see and use the computers. We
have changed the way computing is represented in public mind.

Blue
inserts in this article are dedicated solely to users of SuperMemo.
If you are not a user, you can skip these

Popularity of SuperMemo vs.
knowledge representation
SuperMemo is still far from being widely accepted. It still awaits a
moment to be packaged in a way that is digestible for an average citizen. Its
problem is its representation in the public mind. It is surprisingly difficult to explain the
benefits of SuperMemo. Try to convince your classmates or colleagues at
work to use SuperMemo to experience this difficulty first hand. It is even
more difficult to explain the program itself and how to use it. And it is
by far the hardest to illustrate the destruction committed on learned
knowledge by giving up spaced repetition. Without finding a formula for
simplicity and popular appeal, SuperMemo will for long remain a tool for
only those with the highest intellectual aspirations

In acquiring knowledge, never say "this article or book is too hard for me".
When listing books he read in his youth, Charles Babbage, the inventor of the first
mechanical computer, wrote "Amongst
these were Humphry Ditton's 'Fluxions', of which I could make nothing". We
know that Babbage was the last person you would suspect of having problems with
mathematical texts. If you see the text of which "you could make nothing",
go to the first
sentence and analyze it. Most often than not, it is just the author who uses
the language or structure that is either inappropriate or not matching your
present knowledge in the field. If you encounter problems, and there is no explanation,
no introduction, or if specialist terminology runs out of the field without a
suitable glossary, you may safely excuse your comprehension problems. Do
not attempt to dig into advanced chemistry article without the basic chemistry
background.
Every fourth word may fall out of your vocabulary range. It may take months or years
to build a necessary background! Least of all, blame your own perception. Just
keep on working harder and one day you will see the light.

If you find difficult material, do not waste time for
depression or despair. Abstractness is inherently harder to digest than
plain facts. Methodically analyze the reasons for which you
cannot comprehend given material. Either the material is badly presented
or you need new knowledge that will resolve your problem. Be patient and
remember: Everything is difficult before it becomes
easy!If you are a user of SuperMemo 2004, see Dealing
with complexity in SuperMemo 2004 later in this article

High achievements in all fields require hours of training. This refers to
music, chess, sciences, sports and what not. I wholeheartedly subscribe to the famous statement by
Edison: "Genius
is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". Training can have a miraculous impact on the human brain. It does not matter
much how well you
were endowed by the genetics. You got no better choice than to commit yourself
to a lifelong course of learning. If you are in a minority that shows
identifiable genetic limitations, you may need to hone your routine to your
particular needs; however, if you have already arrived to this point in this
article, health permitting, you are highly likely to be equipped with all the
basic intellectual components for building genius.

It is a pity that not all those genius chess brains had been sufficiently employed
in the betterment of this planet. However, they all provide highly valuable material for studying the human brain power. There are a
couple of reasons for chess being so valuable to study. Chess rules are clear-cut. The competitive
achievement is measurable. Individual games are available for
study move-by-move on the Internet. Last but not least, chess is often
associated with aura of genius, and world champions generate lots of
excitement that results in numerous books and studies on scientific and
popular-scientific platforms. In those conditions, we can study factors
that help some people reach processing power that is hard to match with
the present computing technology.

Chess is a great metaphor for creativity. Chessboard positions roughly correspond to
facts and applicable moves correspond to inferential rules (see: facts
and rules). The more abstract the rules, the more positions they can
resolve. The more abstract the rules you acquire, the less sheer computation
your brain needs to do in the game of chess. Consequently, the better your chess
score. The move rules will often be based on pattern recognition rules
who can filter complex position into simply identifiable patterns. The better
your arsenal of pattern recognition rules, the more applicable your move rules
become. The rules are the key to chess genius.

British chess player and author Jonathan Levitt proposed a formula
linking chess scores with IQ (The Levitt Equation:
Elo
~ (10 x IQ) + 1000). Although the formula does not represent
exact science, it is a good illustration of the difference between the two concepts of
intelligence and genius: one of the true mental processing power and the
other of the potential to develop it. Levitt's formula determines the
approximate maximum chess score for a given IQ assuming years of
extensive training. The purpose of IQ is to distil innate mental skills
from expertise. Although this is never entirely possible, people with
little expertise in any selected field may still show high IQ which is
indicative of high intellectual potential. In chess, adding new
recognition and move rules to memory will plateau with time, and the quality of
reshuffling them in conditions of maximum concentration will determine
the champion. However, there is no
substitute for hard work on the way to success in chess. No amount of lateral
thinking or transcendental mediation will help. The chess player's brain
needs to be equipped with the arsenal of thousands position patterns.
The chess scores
reflect the true processing power of a players brain in the narrow
specialty of chess. In real life, high IQ is welcome; however, what will
determine a person's success in a given field is the actual ability to
solve problems in that given field. This ability is always related to
knowledge, skills and expertise. One of the greatest geniuses of the
past century, Herbert Simon (Nobel prize in
economics, 1978) has devoted his whole life to studying expertise and
proposed another (very rough) formula: it takes 10 years for an
individual to reach the top-rank level in any field of expertise (be it
chess, medical diagnosis or botany). This number reflects the fact that
we tend to measure human accomplishments relative to the accomplishments
other individuals in the same class. With classical learning methods,
acquired knowledge tends to plateau after a period of time in which the
forgetting rate becomes comparable with the acquisition rate. Today,
this plateau can be overcome with spaced repetition (see: SuperMemo)
that linearizes the acquisition of
knowledge in lifetime. Simon's 10-year period reflects the
approximate acquisition plateau in non-linear learning. If an individual
works hard enough, he will sail close to his maximum knowledge
acquisition potential in more or less ten years. His knowledge and
skills, as compared with his peers, will then be most noticeable. Due to
the law of diminishing returns, the increase in expertise will not be as
easy to notice later on.
Levitt's formula links the intellectual potential expressed by IQ with
the maximum level of expertise in the field expressed by chess score.
Herbert Simon's "formula" fits well with chess. The brightest
stars of chess, Bobby Fischer and Judit Polgar both got their grand
master titles in just under ten years. Some estimates put the
number of position patterns recognized by a grandmaster at 50,000. This
is more or less as much knowledge as you accumulate with
several-hours-per-day extensive learning in the period of ten years in
any field (or in a much shorter period
in SuperMemo).

An important component of success in chess is the way chess knowledge
is represented in the
brain. Optimum representation cannot be described verbally, but it is acquired with time via
the inherent properties of neural networks employed in processing of the
chessboard configurations. Herbert Simon noticed that grandmasters show
huge advantage over amateur players in their ability to memorize or
recognize meaningful positions in chess. At the same time, their advantage
all but evaporates when it comes to memorizing meaningless positions (i.e.
those that are not likely to result from a real game). Grandmasters see
the chessboard in their special way. They use their own representation.
Their own language. Their own pattern recognition. This special
representation is the key to getting away from the complexity of chess and
reducing games to (relatively) simple game of applying thousands of
memorized rules of the winning strategy. As with memorizing the result of
199 x 199, good rules make it possible to replace lengthy computation with
a quick retrieval of a solution or applying a succession of just a few
well-fitting rules. This is also why it is so difficult to write computer
programs that could match grandmaster skills. Those non-verbal skills are
difficult to convert to unfailing algorithms.

In essence, chess training is based on memorizing positions and moves (see:
smart
vs. dumb learning if the word memorizing raises an opposition here). A chess player's brain
subconsciously develops a specific chess language in which it expresses
the events on the chessboard. This language is a form of knowledge
representation which, as it is always the case in learning, plays a
central role in success. Once this internal language develops and
becomes the player's second nature, all games analyzed and played, leave a trace of
memorized chess knowledge in player's memory. Over years, player's
memory acts like an efficient pattern recognition computer. One look at
the chessboard results in a quick retrieval of relevant patterns from
memory and a quick analysis of not-so-many applicable move rules and
their outcomes.
Unlike Deep Blue beating
Kasparov by juggling 200 millions positions per second in its
digital memory, a chess player, with a high error rate, quickly guesses
best moves in a process that is hard to replicate in a computer.

Of numerous interlinking factors, the personality of a chess player
may be one of the most important factors for his or her ultimate success. The
baseline IQ may determine the realistic ceiling of achievement. However,
it is hard work and training that makes a great chess player. For this,
you need a truly neurotic personality with an extreme obsession for the
game. Scrupulous analysis of the game and highly competitive spirit are
crucial ingredients. It is the personality that turns a budding player
into a computer-like achieving machine where chess permeates all aspects
of an individual's life. Training, tournaments, game analysis and the highest
accomplishment are central points of a chess champion's mind throughout his day. With training, further qualities develop: the art of
concentration, and chess expertise. On-demand concentration plays a greater
role in chess than in other areas of creative activity. A chess player
must reach top concentration at the right moment and sustain a
high-level of game processing power until the next move is chosen. On
the other hand, success in sciences, engineering, business, etc. will
rely on the quality of the creative output independent of the speed at
which it is reached. More like in correspondence chess. If you can produce a better
result in 3 hours of thinking than another genius in 3 minutes of thinking, you
can still
arrive to a better business plan, better scientific theory, better algorithm,
better design, better marketing idea, etc. Your creation over many years
will accumulate those incremental points. In creativity, quality counts more
than speed

In chess, it is easy to notice that statistically it better to be
Jewish, middle-class, and male for top achievement. The Jewish factor is
more to do with home environment and family values rather than with
genetics. The male factor may have more to do with the genes; however, Judit Polgar
could still beat
99.99997% males of this planet (i.e. just about all of them except few).
Additionally, women's incentives to enter the chess world are miserable
(judging by less glamour and offensive prize offers), and
disincentives to leave it are by far greater (see the issue of marriage
and children in Polgar sisters insert). Probably, the sex and race, as
baseline IQ, can influence the hard to measure ceiling of achievement;
however, in practical terms they appear inconsequential. It is the
quality and the amount of training that will determine the outcome

Ultimately the short formula for genius in chess is: (1) the right competitive
personality that makes one work hard and able to reach the peaks of
concentration at critical times, and (2) the resulting hard work
that leads to mastering thousands of highly abstract chessboard rules

Similar preconditions are true for creativity in general: it all begins
with the rage to master and years of training towards a
problem solving expertise in a given field

A well-planned training regimen has been shown to lead to a remarkable progress in people suffering from various inborn limitations to the
functioning of the brain. The brain's amazing ability to compensate for the
limited functionality of its components can be well illustrated by an
excellent prognosis for kids with hemispherectomy (i.e. surgery in which half
of the brain is removed). If hemispherectomy is conducted early enough, the
kid is likely to return to normal life. Due to the brain's symmetry, a damage
to the same area on both sides of the brain may be harder to compensate but
still not impossible. Dyslexia is a genetically based condition in which
reading may pose particular challenge in otherwise bright people. Dyslectics
show reduced activity in their language center on the left side of their
brain. In dyslexia, training can be very frustrating but the right hemisphere
can compensate for the limitations of the left side. To experience the
hardship of dyslectic training, pick up the pen in your non-dominant hand and
write now the letter that has waited years to be written. Don't just slug it
away, try to match the speed of your dominant hand. See the pain? Incidentally, Edison was
a dyslectic too. And so was
Einstein

People who experience reading difficulty without being otherwise
intellectually disabled are said to suffer from dyslexia. Studying dyslexia is
very valuable for understanding intelligence and creativity. It illustrates the
power of inborn wiring of the brain in developing mental skills. At the same
time it can show how inborn limitations can be overcome by using the
compensatory power of the brain. Dyslexia is caused by an inability to handle
linguistic information in visual form.

5-15% of the population can be diagnosed as suffering from various degrees of
dyslexia. Its main manifestation is a difficulty in developing reading skills in
elementary school children. Those difficulties result from reduced ability to link up visual symbols with
sounds. In the past, dyslexia was mistakenly thought to have a motivational
background. Researchers studying the brains of dyslectics have, however, found
that in reading tasks dyslexics show reduced activity in the left inferior
parietal cortex. Otherwise, dyslectics are known to often show higher than
average intelligence. A number of bright brains are said to have suffered from
varying degree of dyslexia. Those include Einstein, Edison, Alexander Graham
Bell, Faraday and many others. Dyslectics may show a natural dislike of reading
and, in consequence, compensate by developing unique verbal communication
skills, inter-personal and leadership skills. Hence so many prominent CEOs list
minor to severe dyslexia among their childhood disabilities. Those include
Richard Branson (Virgin Enterprises), Henry Ford, Ted Turner (AOL - Time
Warner), John Chambers (Cisco), as well as prominent statesmen: Winston
Churchill, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy and others.
Perhaps for similar reasons, many dyslexics tend to take on arts (e.g. Tom
Cruise or Whoopi Goldberg)

The list above indicates that those who show reading difficulties in
childhood can also cope well with their deficiency later in life and become avid
readers and skilled writers. Research shows that intense training in dyslectics
helps them use the right part of their brain to take over the limited
functionality in the left part. Even a few weeks of intense phonological
training (e.g. breaking down and rearranging sounds to produce different words)
can help noticeably improve reading skills. Unlike normal adults, phonological
training shows increase in the activity in the right temporoparietal
cortex. This part of the brain works in spatial tasks and may be the main
compensatory structure in phonological training. This is the sister region of
the left temporoparietal cortex responsible for visual motion processing which
is underactive in many dyslexics. The earlier the phonological regimen is taken
on, the better the overall result. Advanced brain scans could identify children at risk of dyslexia before they can even
read.

In 1979, anatomical differences in the brain of
a young dyslexic have been documented. Albert Galaburda of Harvard Medical
School noticed that language centers in dyslectic brains showed microscopic
flaws known as ectopias and mycrogyria. Both affect the normal six-layer
structure of the cortex. An ectopia is a collection of neurons that have pushed
up from lower cortical layers into the outermost one. A microgyrus is an area of
cortex that includes only four layers instead of six. These flaws affect
connectivity and functionality of the cortex in critical areas related to sound
and visual processing. These and similar structural abnormalities may be the
basis of the inevitable and hard to overcome difficulty in reading.

Several genetic regions on chromosomes 1 and 6
have been found that might be linked to dyslexia. In all likelihood, dyslexia is
a conglomeration of disorders that all affect similar and associated areas of
the cortex. With time, science is likely to identify and classify all individual
suborders with benefits to our understanding of how low-level genetic flaws can
affect the wiring of the brain and enhance or reduce a particular component of
human mental capacity.

Whether today's models of dyslexia are correct
or not, the main lesson of dyslexia is that minor genetic changes affecting the
layering of the cortex in a minor area of the brain may impose inborn limitation
on the overall intellectual function. At the same time, dyslexia shows that the
brain exhibits a strong ability to compensate for its inborn or acquired
limitations, and intense training can often result in miraculous
turnabouts

Smart lifelong training is an essential component of the formula for
genius! Even though
genetic background or health may handicap a minority, the optimum
strategy for maximizing the intellectual power is still the same: as
much quality learning as possible. Learning is your genius brain
work-out. Commit yourself to heavy learning for life today! Be sure that
this is smart learning (as emphasized in the next section). Genius of spatial symmetry, Buckminster Fuller said: I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of
experience.See also: Practice
can make a perfect genius

Most average students today could amaze Aristotle with their ability to
draw conclusions in many areas of science. They would laugh at the great
philosopher's theories. Their brains are better primed for scientific thinking
than the brain of the greatest philosopher of the 4th century B.C. In today's
world, your IQ or the folding of your cerebral cortex are valuable assets but
they are ultimately less important than your ability to solve problems. This
ability is based on knowledge. And knowledge is inherently acquirable. One thing
you must not forget though: Make your learning smart:

To build genius, your learning program must be based on high applicability of
newly acquired skills and knowledge. If you memorize the whole phone book (i.e.
a big set of facts), you won't be much closer to a genius mind and your problem
solving ability will increase only slightly (mostly through the beneficial
effect of memory training on the health of your brain). On the other hand, a
simple formula for expected payoff may affect all decisions you make in problem
solving and in life in general. It can, for example, save you years of wasted
investment in lottery tickets. Millions of people are enticed with huge lottery
jackpots, yet they would never agree to give up their whole income for life in
order to get it back at retirement in one-off payment, which is a frequent probabilistic payoff equivalent of taking part in lotteries. Using the
terminology defined above, you will find most benefit in mastering and
understanding highly abstract rules of logical thinking and decision making.

To accomplish smart learning, you will need to constantly pay utmost
attention to what material you decide to study. You must avoid short term
gratification at the cost of long-term learning. It may be great fun to learn
all Roman emperors and details of their interesting lives and rule. However,
unless you study with a big picture in mind (e.g. in an attempt to understand
why civilizations thrive or fall), your genius may benefit less than by slogging
through less funny but highly applicable formulas of operation research (those
can for example help you optimize your diet, investment, daily schedule, etc.). In
other words, you cannot be guided just by the fun of learning but by your goals and
needs. In time, you will learn to see the link between long-term learning and
long-term benefits. You will simply conditions yourself to love beneficial
learning. Hard study material can still provide instant
gratification.

While you focus on your goals, you cannot forget about the overall context of
human life. You cannot dig solely into studying car engines only because this
happens to be your profession. This would put you at risk of developing a tunnel
vision. Your genius could be severely handicapped. You might spend years
improving liquid fuel engine efficiency while others would leap years by getting
involved in hydrogen engines. Their decisions would not come from genius itself
but from an extensive knowledge of the field, relevant sciences and the human
endeavor in general. One of the main reasons for which companies go bankrupt is
that their leadership fails to spot the change. As corporate darwinism
eliminates short-sighted teams, future society will witness more and more
intellectual darwinism. To understand the trends and the future, you need to
study human nature, economics, sociology, history, neurophysiology, mathematics
and computing sciences, and more. The more you lick the stronger your
predictive powers and your problem solving capacity and creative strength.

A bright 25-year-old Microsoft programmer has suggested to me recently that I
use wrong examples in my articles on learning. He specifically referred to the
question "Which year was the Internet born?", which he
classified as a piece of trivia. He implied I should use more "useful"
examples to encourage readers. Here my own tunnel vision showed up as I found
his position very surprising. I misjudged the concept of trivia in the eyes of
people that do meet the criteria of genius. The term trivia excellently
reflects the sort of knowledge we do not want to learn in the quest for genius.
These are not-so-useful facts or rules of low applicability. However, the
concept of trivia is highly relative. To a child in a kindergarten, the birth of
the Internet is rather meaningless. At this stage of development, the child may
find it difficult to grasp the concept of the Internet itself. Most of parents
will wait until the primary school before showing a child a web browser (esp.
that reading skills may be needed to appreciate the concept). The value of
putting the date on the birth of the Internet probably develops only in the
context of an effort to understand the history of technological development. In
this context, 1969 may be as important as the years of Gutenberg. Only when
multiple events of the 1960s and the 1970s dovetail together, the commissioning
of ARPANET becomes meaningful. When we figure out that we landed the man on the
moon before making the first connection via the net, 1969 looms larger. If we
dig deeper, we may find it inspiring to know that when Charley Kline tried to log in on
October 29, 1969, the network crashed as he typed the letter G. This
little detail may still contribute to your genius! Say you work on commissioning
a major installation you worked on for several years. You know that the
installation implements revolutionary concepts yet it keeps on crashing. You are
about to lose hearth. This may not necessarily be an emotional event, after all
you also need to apply probability to deciding when to give up blind-alley
pursuits even after years of investment. The juxtaposition of the small letter G
and the groundbreaking concept of the interconnected world will help you see the
big picture. If your concept is great enough, you will go on through another 100
crashes in hope of diagnosing the reason. If you win, your measure of genius
will be enhanced.

Listen to other people's advice and valuations. The younger you are the more
you should listen. In the end though, it must be you who determines the
criteria for sifting golden knowledge from trivia. Only you can measure the
value of knowledge in the light of your own goals.

Remember that not all knowledge can easily be formulated in a declarative
manner. Remember then to use the power of your own neural networks: solve
problems, practice your skills, compute, abstract, associate, etc. You and
others may not be able to see or verbalize some rules but your brain will
extract them in the course of practice. Once the rules have been developed, try
to formulate them and write them down. This can be of benefit to you and others

In early versions of SuperMemo, your decisions related to sifting
trivia from valuable knowledge would be binary in nature: memorize or forget.
In 1991, the concept of the forgetting index made it possible to memorize
items with a given
probability of recall. In SuperMemo 2004, with incremental
reading, there
is a continuous transition from trivia to your platinum genius-building
knowledge. Apart from the forgetting index, you can use ordinals and
rescheduling tools to manage unheard-of quantities of knowledge

The ability to "see" the future is one of the best tests
for genius. The
nature of spacetime does not seem to make it possible to probe the
future like we can probe the past via historical records. However, the
laws of physics provide a strong platform for peeking into what may
happen. A ball falling freely to earth may be an easy guess based on the
Newtonian laws of gravity. However, the true difficulty in predicating
the winner of Gore-Bush clash in October 2000 came out only after the
election day on November 7. Guessing the winner of the 2004 election
today would be yet harder. Guessing on the state of mankind beyond 2100
is a game reserved for only the best-equipped futurist minds. Predictive
powers are so good in probing genius because they test all of these: (1)
nimbleness of the mind, (2) extensive knowledge on the mechanics of the
universe and the society, and (3) the abstractness of reasoning rules.
Write down your predictions of the future today. In five years you will be
amazed with your own predictive lapses. When will we be able to cure AIDS or
cancer? When will we talk freely to computers? What job will you land after
graduation? Would you predict the web explosion in 1990 (i.e. before the
publishing of the web protocols)? Or in 1994 (i.e. already after Filo and Yang
started collecting their Yahoo links)? What knowledge do you think you lack
today to make your predictions more accurate?

Predictive powers are the cornerstone of success in business. Those who
can see the technologies and trends that will shape a market in 3-5
years are posed to do well. Here comes the value of basic sciences such
as math and physics in extracting trends from the chaos of the modern
world. The value of math and physics comes from the fact that it equips
you with highly abstract rules with a wide range of applications. This
is why it pays highly to learn artificial intelligence, neural networks, sociology, neurophysiology, systems theory,
statistics, evolutionary psychology, history, etc. Those sciences formulate rules that make it
possible to better understand the reality, and most of all, draw
conclusions about the reality. Those rules are the tools of computation
for processing the picture of reality in your mind.

Here is an example: when Alan Turing developed the concept of his Turing
machine, he
equipped his genius brain with the tool for understanding computation.
The Turing machine is a sort of a toy computer that scans a tape of
symbols and stamps the tape depending on the currently read symbols and
its own state. Turing's early intuition was that his toy computer, given enough
time, could compute everything that is computable. If future was
deterministically computable from the quantum states of subatomic particles, the Turing
machine could compute it. If future was non-deterministic, the density
function of individual outcomes could be computed too. The Turing machine became the simplest
possible metaphor for the human brain. Turing could see the parallel
between the shifting states of the Turing machine and the states of the
human mind, including emotional states and the most complex computations of the human thought. Turing could then state boldly
that one day machines will be as intelligent as humans. The famed Turing
test is based on putting a computer in one room, a human in another, and
testing if outside observers could distinguish between the two by means
of a conversation (e.g. via a computer terminal). Once computers become indistinguishable
from humans, they will have been said to have passed the Turing test.
Most of people living at Turing's time (the 1930s) would disagree, but
their predictive powers were limited by lack of tools for understanding
the mind and computation. Turing machine and basic truths about its
properties, equipped Turing's brain with tools that made it easy for
him to see the simple parallel between the mind and the machine. For
most researchers in the area of artificial intelligence, it is obvious
that the Turing test will be passed sooner or later. Perhaps in 2010,
perhaps in 2040, but it will happen. In the 1950s, Herbert Simon, using
the same abstract rules related to computation, spoke loudly about his
belief that the computer will beat the world chess champion within ten
years. He was off by thirty years. This illustrates the difficulty in
predicting the future, as well as the power of some basic abstract
rules. In this case, Simon concluded that given the appropriate
objective function for evaluating chess positions, it is only the matter
of the number of moves the computer can process before it can produce
better moves than a human being. He underestimated the power of human
brain in simplifying (read: representing) the chessboard situation. Yet
the ultimate outcome of Simon's prediction was inevitable and obviously
true. This example illustrates how a simple abstract tool (Turing
Machine) can be used to predict the future (fate of the Turing test) by
providing a simple model of complex reality (human brain and its behavioral
characteristics).

Ray Kurzweil is probably best know for his improbable-sounding
predictions of the future. Machine intelligence is not only obvious to
him. It should also come sooner than most AI researchers predict.
Kurzweil's predictive powers come from immense knowledge of technology,
sciences, and the society. Kurzweil's case shows how extensive learning
equips the brain with genius powers of which predictive powers are so
noticeable. Kurzweil predictions (including world wide web) have already
materialized in a number of cases. Read Kurzweil's lips. That could be
the shortest way towards reading the future save your own years of heavy
learning.

In 1977, the bright mind of Ken Olson, President of the Digital
Equipment Corporation, committed a notorious blunder expressed at
the Convention of the World Future Society. Olson said: There is no reason for any
individual to have a computer in their home. Possibly reading this text on
your home PC, you may wonder how Ken Olson could possibly be considered
bright if he could not see an obvious value of the PC? His blunder does
not detract a bit from Olson's brain powers. After all, he did not reach
the top of DEC by chance or connections. He built it from the ground up.
His creative powers were in
this particular case curtailed by his own experience with computing
(fascination with the power of VAX and VMS in juxtaposition to a weakly
microcomputer).
Yes, knowledge can be detrimental too. Einstein's relativity theory
gained him the most identifiable status of the ultimate genius of
science mostly due to the fact that he was able to extricate himself
from the Newtonian mold that is so natural to our day-to-day thinking. Not
being able to break the mold is not a sign of lacking genius! It is
simply a sign of being burdened with the prejudice of one's current
knowledge. In no way should this mean that learning on its own can be
detrimental. It never is as long as we do not apply the creative mold to
the learning process itself. One of the most important rules your genius
brain needs to store in the very beginning is that: no rule is true for
ever. Rules can be added, modified, deleted or replaced. You need to
strengthen your rules related to fuzzy logic. In simple words, you have
to learn to think in terms of the probability of truth

SuperMemo makes
it easy to see that knowledge we are fed daily via various media is rich
in contradictions. If we learn with a lower degree of retention
(classical learning), new contradictory knowledge easily obliterates old
knowledge. We often do not even see the contradiction. If you learn for
a high retention (say 95-99% in SuperMemo), contradictions become painfully
visible. This helps you to become critical in evaluating the sources of
information. If this article tells you that Einstein was
dyslectic, take
into account the rules of memetics: this comforting piece of news
propagates easily. It propagates by far more easily than the core
meaning behind Einstein's theory of relativity. From article to article. From
website to website. From person to person

Ken Olson blundered by claiming no demand for personal computers, but his brain was able to quickly
absorb the new reality (esp. in the context of DEC's rapid decline).
Olson's enlightenment might have been too late for DEC, but not
to Olson's ability to creatively contribute to the computer industry.
Long before Olson's blunder, the founders of Apple had already known the truth:
microcomputers will take the planet by storm. The power of the storm was still a
surprise to Steve Wozniak. So was the fact that the clunky PC was
later to displace
his cherished Apple line. The PC storm surprised even the man who made the most of
it: Bill Gates. The man whose predictive powers made him as
valuable as the economies of whole countries. Bill Gates's
wealth attracts as much envy as it attracts admiration. This is why his own blunders
were studied to the last detail. Bill Gates blundered dismally on more
than one occasion. And again it does not detract from his true
software business genius. Gates was clearly late with noticing the power
of the Internet, yet his .NET initiative shows that he and his team were
able to correct the strategy on the go. Actually, the .NET credit goes
to Microsoft employees who were able to contact their boss directly with their
own ideas on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In the end, treating the company
electronic communications as a nervous system returns credit back to Gates and
his managerial skills. In 1981, Gates is reported to
have said: "640K ought to be enough (memory) for anybody"
thus contributing to the infamous 640K-lock. It is also Gates who
predicted that OS/2 would be the most important piece of software that
has ever been developed. So what? Bill Gates, as all true geniuses,
keeps on learning. To err is human. As long as we do not stick to the
old mold. There is no fool like an old fool

Predictive lapses do not detract from human genius. They befell
to presidents, Nobel Prize winners, CEOs, analysts and the most
amazing genius
minds such as that of John
Von Neumann. Because they often comfort those who are less brisk intellectually,
many are a myth only:

It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible
to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such
statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years. John
Von Neumann, a
major contributor to the design of modern computer
architecture, ca. 1949

Television won't hold on to any market it
captures after the first six months. People will soon tire of staring at a box
every night. Darryl Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox, 1946

This telephone has
too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.
The device is of no value to us. Western Union internal memo, 1876 (shortly
before years of a patent battle with Bell Company)

An amazing invention, but
who would ever want to use one? U.S.
president Rutherford Hayes, after participating in a trial telephone call
between Washington and Philadelphia in 1876

No matter what happens, the U.S. Navy is not going to be caught
napping. Secretary of the Navy, December 4, 1941 (three
days before Pearl Harbor)

There is no likelihood man can ever
tap the power of the atom. Robert
Millikan, Nobel Prize winner in physics, 1920

I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the
best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last
out the year.
The editor in charge of business books for
Prentice Hall, 1957

I think there is a world market for about
5 computers. Thomas Watson Sr., President of IBM, 1943 (probably an
urban legend)

Everything that can be invented has been. US Patent Office 1899 (an
urban legend)

For a taste of excellent knowledge-based predictive powers in
action, see the highly educational and heart-warming "Long
Boom" by a long-view guru: Peter Schwartz (with Peter
Leyden; Wired, July 1997). Even
though the article is only four years old, we can see that the
authors underestimated the destructive power of investor greed for
the dot-com economy. But future holds positive surprises for
optimists too

Creativity is usually defined as the ability to generate new ideas that are
both highly innovative as well as highly useful. A new idea will not be called
creative unless it is quite hard to come by. For example, if you decide to paint
your car orange with little blue ants all over it, you won't fall into a highly
creative field. After all, everyone can paint her car like this. That you do not
see blue ants in the streets comes from the fact that a number of objects
that could take ants' place is near to infinite. An art expert passing a judgment
on your car's artistry could perhaps change the verdict. On the other hand, if you keep on
churning dozens of ideas which have little or no practical value, few will
consider this a highly creative effort. Similarly, potentially valuable ideas
that live and die in your brain without ever being converted into a practical
application will not pass the test of the definition used herein. In this article, we will adhere to the pragmatic
criterion in judging creativity. Let us analyze the
basis of creativity and ways to improve creativity via training and application
of relevant tools and/or techniques. We will skirt
around artistic creativity, which falls
out of my own professional focus, and is by far more relativistic: artistic creativity is in the eye
(or ear) of the beholder.

Here are some examples of creative
breakthroughs that we will use in an effort to find a prescription for:

Johannes Gutenberg built upon the idea
of metal blocks with letters, combined existing technologies, and sparked one
of the greatest revolutions in the history of mankind

Steve Wozniak combined his knowledge of
electronics with a vision of a computer displaying images on a TV screen, and working
with a typewriter-like keyboard. Those ideas opened a path towards a personal
computer for the masses

Tim Berners-Lee inspired by the idea of
hypertext and in need of an efficient communication tool for large
teams came up with a protocol framework for the future world wide web. He
converted multiple ideas and hours of design and programming into a
foundation of the greatest communication breakthrough since Gutenberg

In 1980, Tim Berners-Lee wrote a little program called Enquire that
helped him link pieces of information together. The program itself was
inspired by an old computer game Adventure. Unlike later Hypercard,
Enquire would run on a multi-user system and make it possible
for people to share data. Using his experience and the inspiration from
the hypertext concept coined in the 1950s by Ted Nelson and derived from
Vannevar Bush's Memex system (early 1940s), Tim Berners-Lee
envisioned a system that could improve information exchange in large
teams. In March 1989, while employed at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee wrote a
proposal for improved information management. His main concern was to improve
keeping track of large projects. His proposal was to build a system that
would be distributed on remote machines, allow of heterogeneity,
decentralized (i.e. growing freely at its nodes independently from other
nodes), and privately extensible. He proposed a team of two people to
develop the project within a year. His proposal's reference section
clearly points to the seminal influences of Ted Nelson and other authors.
By November of 1990, Tim started working on the prototype. The
world-wide-web, as it was then called, went into use at CERN in May 1991.
By August 1991, its existence was announced to a number of Internet
newsgroups. By 1994, the web edged out telnet to become the second most
popular service on the Internet. In the percentage of byte traffic, it was
only behind FTP-data. Today, the web is the single most important tool of
global transformation.

Tim Berners-Lee creatively combined his experience, and existing ideas into a breakthrough concept that
changed the world (and we have barely seen the beginning). Building blocks
of the world wide web are simple enough to be understood by a high school
student. Yet their unique combination into a simple, extensible, and cohesive concept
deservedly rewarded the genius of Tim Berners-Lee with the credit for the greatest human breakthrough since
Gutenberg

If you look at Gutenberg's, Steve Wozniak's or
Tim Berners-Lee's breakthrough ideas, you may think: "That's simple.
I could have invented it". The greatest power of an invention is often
in its simplicity. Yet creative molds often prevent dozens of inventors from
hitting the right idea. The fact that great creative breakthroughs seem so
simple in retrospect gave origin to the popular saying: The darkest place is
under the candlestick. Creative mold is simply very hard to overcome even to
the most insightful mind. Ted Nelson had spent years perfecting his genius Xanadu
ideas. Yet Tim Berners-Lee, in the course of two short years,
combined a couple of simple concepts to turn the world upside down. The
simplicity, and a near-obvious nature of their inventions make it hard for the
inventors themselves to recognize the invention's potential early. Without Steve Jobs,
Wozniak may have never gone to believe that his new computer design could
be used beyond his hobbyist club, let alone by millions. Great creative
breakthroughs combine luck, coincidence, timing, and persistence. They are also
helped greatly by a very specific kind of creative mind: at times inattentive,
hyperactive, distractingly creative, obsessive, often paranoid, and even nearly
psychotic (as in the case of John Nash depicted in Oscar-winning Beautiful Mind). As
for luck and timing, Gutenberg's ideas would not
work had they been originally transplanted to China (see Gutenberg). Steve Wozniak without
Steve Jobs might not work (see: Steve Wozniak). WWW striving for the
perfection of Xanadu might not work. For your creative genius to change the
world, you need to look for workable solutions that fit the present world.
As Vannevar Bush noted, the genius of Charles Babbage, the inventor of the first
mechanical computer, was born a century too
early. Not only was his mechanical computer hard to implement. Not only would it
be uneconomical and unworkable had it been constructed. Not only would it be
hard to educate his contemporaries about its usefulness. The most painful
mismatch in timing was that the Babbage's work has largely been misunderstood,
forgotten and had little impact on the design of the first electric computers a
century later. The timing was not
right. Only for Babbage's 200th birthday has the machine along his design been
proven workable by researchers at the Science Museum in London. One common
feature of the greatest failed inventions is that their fathers gave them up
upon hitting a better idea. In such cases, obsessive compulsive creativity may
be a hindrance. Babbage gave up his Differential Engine as soon as a
vision of a far better Analytical Engine dawned upon him. In contrast, Seymour
Cray, when designing his supercomputers would maximally simplify the
architecture in order to be sure his designs see the market. Cleverly balancing
implementation speed against perfection, Cray has outdistanced everyone in the
supercomputing field (until new creative breakthroughs set him back). Creativity
and cold meticulousness are often at odds. They require a different type of
mind. A biologist will notice that they are based on a different neurohormonal
brain profile! Tim Berners-Lee is an excellent example of a brilliantly creative mind,
which is still able to focus on a task at hand, efficiently execute the plan of
action, and make things happen.

Steve Wozniak is universally credited with initiating the entry of
computers into private homes. Although his contribution may be seen as a
compilation of a few well-known ideas that have perfectly coincided with
the technological readiness for a mass-produced computer, Steve
Wozniak's ingenuity and relentless creativity made him uniquely suitable
to pick up the credit for starting the PC revolution.

Successor to Tom Swift

Wozniak's early inspirations came from his father Jerry who was a
Lockheed engineer, and from a fictional wonder-boy: Tom
Swift. His father infected him with fascination for electronics and
would often check over young Woz's creations. Tom Swift, on the other
hand, was for Woz an epitome of creative freedom, scientific knowledge,
and the ability to find solutions to problems. Tom Swift would also attractively
illustrate the big
awards that await the inventor. To this day, Wozniak returns to Tom
Swift books and reads them to his own kids as a form inspiration.

Woz's values were shaped and strengthened over years by his family, Christian
philosophy (turning the other cheek), radio amateur ethics (helping people in
emergency), books (Swift's utilitarian and humanitarian attitude) and others.

As a lasting Swift legacy, throughout his life, Wozniak loved all projects
that required heavy thinking. He learned the basics of mathematics and
electronics from his father. He would at times be so absorbed in his projects
that his mother would have to shake him back to reality. When Woz was 11, he
built his own amateur radio station, and got a ham-radio license. At age 13, he was elected president of his high school
electronics club, and won first prize at a science fair for a
transistor-based calculator. Also at 13, Woz
built his first computer that laid the engineering foundation of his later
success.

First home computer

With all engineering skills at hand, it was not hard for the Wizard
of Woz to
envisage a simple computer of his dreams. The keyboard would work like a
typewriter. The messages would be displayed on a TV-like monitor. The
computer could be assembled with relatively cheap circuitry. By 1975, Woz
would drop out of the University of California at Berkeley and would
come up with a computer that could sweep the nation. However, he was
largely working within a scope of the Homebrew Computer Club, a local
group of electronics hobbyists. His project had no wider ambition. As it
often happens in history, Woz was just a single hemisphere of a genius brain.
The other component was Steve Jobs whom Wozniak met when he was 16. Jobs, 5-years
Woz's junior, who himself had dropped out of Reed College in 1972, was a
perennial starry-eyed visionary who could see far beyond the possible.
Jobs and Wozniak came to the conclusion that a completely assembled and
inexpensive computer would be in demand. They sold some of their prized
possessions (e.g. Woz's scientific calculator), raised $1300, and assembled the first
prototype in Jobs' garage. Their first computer was quite unimpressive
by today's standards but in 1975 it was an engineering breakthrough that
would change the course of history (picture).
In simplicity of use it went years ahead of Altair which was introduced
earlier in 1975. Altair had no display and no true storage. It received commands
via a series of switches and a single program would require thousands of
toggles without an error. Altair output was presented in the form of
flashing lights. Altair was great for true geeks, Bill Gates and Paul
Allen were one of the first among them, but it was not really usable for
a wider public. It would not even come assembled. Woz's computer, on the
other hand, named Apple I, was a fully assembled and functional unit
that contained a $25 microprocessor on a first-ever single-circuit board
with ROM memory. On April 1, 1976, Jobs and Wozniak formed Apple Computer
Company. Wozniak quit his job at HP and became the vice president in
charge of research and development at Apple. Apple I was priced at $666.
Jobs and Wozniak made a killing by selling their first 25 computers to a local
dealer.

Wozniak could now focus full-time on fixing the shortcomings of Apple
I and adding new functionality. His genius was in full creative swing.
Apple I earned his company close to a million dollars. His new design
was to retain the most important characteristics: simplicity and
usability. Woz introduced high-resolution graphics in Apple II. His
computer could now display pictures instead of just letters: "I
threw in high-res. It was only two chips. I didn't know if people would
use it''. By 1978, he also designed an inexpensive floppy-disk
drive. He and Randy Wigginton wrote a simple disk operating system. In
addition to his hardware wizardry, Wozniak wrote most of software that
ran Apple. He wrote a Basic interpreter, a Breakout game (which was also
a reason to add sound to Apple), the code needed to control the disk
drive, and more. On software side, Apple II was also made more
attractive to a business user by the famous pioneering
spreadsheet: Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston's VisiCalc. This unique
combination of new ideas resulted in a screaming market success. In
1980, the Apple company went public and made Jobs and Wozniak instant
millionaires. At the age of 27, Jobs was the youngest Fortune 400 man in
1982 -- a rare case before the dot-com bubble era. Incidentally, in 1978, when
the company cut the price of Apple II, it helped to launch yet another
meteoric software career; that of Mitch Kapor. Kapor scraped enough
money to buy his own Apple. Inspired by VisiCalc and a meeting with its
inventors, he went on to develop Lotus 1-2-3 and swept the spreadsheet
market place for years to follow.

Plane crash

In February of 1981, Wozniak nearly lost his genius in an accident
that could have easily claimed his life at age 30. While taking off from Scotts
Valley airport, an engine failed in his Beechcraft Bonanza airplane and it
crashed. In addition to facial injuries, Woz experienced a retrograde
amnesia. This means that he could not recall things from before the
accident. He had also problem with forming new memories. At worst, years
of training could have been permanently erased from his memory. Those
memories laid the foundation of his genius thinking. Luckily, five weeks
after the accident, his memory powers returned. The genius was ready for
more breakthroughs but his passions shifted from technology to
people.

Woz became less enthusiastic about his work for Apple. He got married
and returned to the university under the name "Rocky Clark" to
get his degrees in 1982 in computer science as well as in electrical
engineering. In 1983, he decided to return to mainstream Apple
development. However, he wanted to be no more than just an engineer
and a motivational factor for Apple workforce. Here he demonstrated a
typical characteristic of a creative mind: craving for creative opportunities
away from the spotlight (cf. William James Sidis). Woz stunned the world
by leaving Apple for good in 1985 nine years after setting up the company.
Jobs was also forced to leave Apple as a result of a power struggle.
Wozniak and Jobs are proud to have originated an anti-corporate ethic
among big players of computer market. Jobs focused on not always practical
innovation with his NeXT vision, while Woz went on to fulfill his other
passions: teaching to fifth grade and charitable activities in the field
of education. Today, Steve Wozniak's passion is to help young talent catch
on the train of opportunity. He provides kids with computers, Internet
accounts, and lessons in programming. In September 2000, Steve Wozniak was
inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame alongside Bell,
Edison, Fermi,
Marconi, Pasteur,
Tesla and others

The future of creativity

Wozniak said: "Apple is not the company I had hoped it would
be. I always thought that a major player in the personal computer
business, with its label on the products, would be composed of top
engineers and multiple labs full of scientists developing new devices
out of physics and chemistry".

Geniuses dislike corporate structures because corporations tend to bend
creativity to commercial purposes. Creative minds tend to be in minority.
At the same time they are convinced that their visions are the only valid
ones.
This inevitably leads to tension and disruptions at work. Some
corporations create independent R&D departments and lavish their most
precious brains with generous research funds. However, only leading
high-tech companies can afford such solutions. Luckily, the new economy
based on the Internet has provided grounds for breeding countless young
geniuses sprouting here and there. Many creative minds are now operating
via their small websites that provide a planetary access to the product of
their intellectual effort. Two young users of SuperMemo have recently set
up a website in their living room. Antimoon.com,
set up at nearly zero-investment is now quickly gaining popularity.

In addition to opening ways towards individual creativity, the Internet
helps corporations hire geniuses without restraining their creativity. A
creative mind operating from a small country over a shoddy Internet
connection can be hired on conditions that provide a unique coincidence of
needs. The genius gets a creative job that is not available in his area or
country at a competitive pay. The corporation gets the most precious
commodity their money can buy: creative genius

All creative individuals experience periods of time when new ideas come into
their mind in droves and there is hardly enough time to write them all down. A
creative individual can hardly hope to implement a fraction of his or her ideas.
Some people are born with highly creative minds. They are privileged from the
onset, but they are also more likely to suffer from side-effects of
neurohormonal aspects of creativity such as inattention, anxiety, depression,
etc. For those who are born with less poetic minds, the understanding of the
creative process can be of great help. Ordinary brains can be made to work in a
highly creative mode. Let us list the conditions needed for the brain to churn
out ideas en masse:

time: the more time you give for an idea to grow, the greater the
likelihood of a breakthrough association; two hours separated by a period of
sleep may do more than two continuous hours

motivation: there must be a need to come up with a solution and
strong motivation to document and analyze the transition steps

curiosity: the mind must curiously stray into unexplored paths when
new associations and unexpected solutions can be found

knowledge: knowledge in relevant areas

Of the above factors, genetic endowment may greatly help in achieving the
suitable state of mind, which also entails motivation and curiosity. However,
the neurohormonal advantage given by the lucky genotype can be made up for with
relatively simple tools and techniques such as: massive learning, cup of coffee,
brainstorming, good health, etc.

Computer metaphor of the creative mind

A creative mind can be compared to an expert system that must go beyond its
current field of expertise and generate new facts and rules. The goal is often
reasonably defined but the path towards the goal is unclear. At other times,
even the goal is not well-defined. It is simply supposed to crop up suddenly as
a creative enlightenment in an effort hazily targeted at innovation. Let us introduce the concept of a creative computer
system as a metaphor for the creative mind. Using
the computer metaphor we can redefine the
previously listed preconditions of creativity in the following manner:

speed: the more parallel processing paths the creative system can
spawn the richer its output (equivalent: state of mind). The rat
maze model of creativity shows that
massively parallel processing is the key factor underlying the
"creative speed". It also provides hints on how the parallel
processing power can be harnessed

minimum interference: we want to avoid power failure, additional
computational tasks (e.g. computing the factorial of one billion at the time
of running the creative process, etc.) (equivalent: environment)

time: the more time we allow for the exploration, the greater the number of tasks we can explore(equivalent:
time). Running parallel creative processes can cut down on time
needed for a creative breakthrough

goal: the creative system by definition will focus on churning new
ideas and recording the results with a general goal defined by its
program (equivalent: motivation). Unbridled random creativity can
often come with valuable outcomes (e.g. in poetry), but may be less useful
in highly focused activities (e.g. engineering)

branching: the creative system will use all heuristics available at
hand to drive exploration of innumerable paths that could potentially result
in a breakthrough (equivalent: curiosity). Curiosity will spawn
conscious branching, but spontaneous branching of the creative mode is also
welcome (as shown in the rat maze model
of creativity)

knowledge: the more rules and well-chosen facts our system has in
store, the greater its
explorative potential. Our system is parallel and associative. In other
words, we do not need to worry much about operational overhead. We do not need to
worry about knowledge overload. However, we do want to maximize relevant
knowledge and the abstractness of the rules (equivalent: knowledge)

In short, our creative system can be improved by adding speed (esp. through
stimulation of parallel processing), minimizing interference, improving the exploratory heuristics, adding
more knowledge and allocating more time.

In simple terms the above means stimulating creative powers, using creative
techniques, avoiding interruption and the pursuit of lifelong learning.

Our brain metaphor presented earlier does not suffice to efficiently explain
the mind in the creative mode. It is the creative mind where the parallel
processing of neural networks comes to play in a most prominent way. Your PC can
run many processes in parallel (e.g. display this article, scan TCP/IP ports,
run multiple service threads, run background applications, etc.). None of these,
however, comes close to what is happening in your brain right now. Zillions of
neural assemblies and centers get activated and inhibited in parallel fighting
for your attention, running voluntary and involuntary control processes,
filtering information or amplifying it, etc. In addition, the text you are
reading produces processes that are in part hidden from your attention and may,
at any minute, spring up with new inspiration or a creative breakthrough.

The way brain controls major parallel processes can roughly be illustrated
with the rat maze model. Imagine a lab rat in a maze. It runs around
until it hits the reward. Let a running rat illustrate one of parallel
computation processes running in your brain. Let hitting the reward illustrate
the moment when a creative association of ideas breaks through to your
attention. Your brain is able to unleash many rats running in parallel. You are
basically unaware of the rodential infestation crawling in your mind.
Imagine your rats are able to breed on the run. One rat can breed when hitting a
reward center or just breed spontaneously. If you drink a cup of coffee, your
rats run faster and spawn more offspring. If you drink more coffee, rats start
jumping over the maze walls and find new shortcuts and solutions. After more cups of coffee, rats start jumping one over another and scream for your
attention resulting in chaos. The same happens when you get overly enthusiastic.
You might transition from enthusiasm, via hypomania to a manic state that meets
the criteria of psychosis. Coffee, excess serotonin, excess dopamine, etc. can
breed more ideas in your mind, but you gradually lose the ability to focus on
the task at hand until your mind disentangles into a psychotic chaos. The
reverse happens if you take a sleeping pill. Your rats start dying out or hiding
in remote corners of the maze. In bipolar disorder, a manic swing can tire the
rats. Once they run out of steam, the brain may collapse into clinical
depression. Once rats slow down, you run out of creative powers. If you spray a
portion of the maze with a cocaine inhalant, that portion of the maze may suffer
a particular infestation of manic rats. Rats jump over one another and spread
out in amuck into various direction. This may happen in an overly stimulated
portion of a schizophrenic brain. If the cocaine sprayed part of the maze is responsible for
representing a particular place or person, you may experience hallucinations or
delusions. You may hear or even see people who do not exist. Your mind becomes paranoid. If
the same overexcited rats run amuck in your temporal cortex during sleep, you
may experience nightmares. When the rats start running in circles you can
experience obsessive compulsive behaviors. You can wash your hands many times
during the day and your rats will still make you think your hands are dirty. You
can step in front of the class and the circling rats will make you repeat "I
am bound to fail", and you do. The same happens if you repeat "I
will not fall asleep tonight" and you don't. The rats are responsible for the
writer's block. There is an optimum number of rats at an optimum level of
excitation for any given task; including writing. If rats are drowsy, you won't
invent much. If they run amuck, you won't be able to convert the chaos of new
ideas into a coherent stream of thoughts. If they run in circles, you may get
stuck with a self-imposed limitation: "I won't write anything creative today";
you keep tossing balls of scratch paper into the basket.
You will want to keep your rats at bay when you cross a street or when you
drive. They can cost you a life. Creative minds may be unwelcome in an air
traffic control tower. On the other hand, you will let rats play to their heart's
content when you brainstorm a new marketing slogan or idea for a movie script.
It is vital to understand that attention and creativity are two difficult to
reconcile qualities. A genius mind must find the right balance. It is the
prefrontal cortex that helps channel rampant creativity into focused attention.
Try LSD and creative chaos will disentangle your reasoning. This happens due to
the prefrontal executive inhibition. The creative mode balance will also change
during the day. Your brain may welcome hyperactive creativity at work time and a complete mode switchover by the time you are ready to
rebuild your neural fabric in sleep. Creativity is a blessing when needed and
may be a bane for insomniacs, schizophrenics, bipolar patients, ADHD kids, OCD
people, etc. It can be gently stimulated with a cup of coffee, or turn your mind
into chaos with LSD, cocaine or even stress. Brainstorming, conducive social
environment, incremental reading, creativity
tools (e.g. Ideafisher) can stimulate creativity by non-pharmacologically unleashing new rats
without a major impact on their agility.

Some people are born with highly creative minds. They invent new things
faster than they can be utilized. However, the same people are at much higher
risk of mental disorder. They may also show less ability to focus or persist.
They may crave novelty that makes them jump on new tasks before old once are
complete. However, the way their prefrontal cortex harnesses creativity may
determine the thin line between a true inborn genius and mental disease.

If increase in creativity was purely beneficial, it would have
certainly been far better promoted in the course of evolution. However,
evolutionary development of creative powers had to be matched by the development
of executive powers that govern attention. Otherwise side effects of
creativity would act as an evolutionary ballast: low-stress tolerance, relationship problems, increased
suicide rate, increased divorce rate, risk and novelty seeking, tendency to get
bored, increased risk of mental disorders, etc.

To take only one example, the high suicide and low reproduction rate of people with bipolar disorder
and their significant prevalence in the society (1%) clearly indicate that its genetic
component (documented as very strong) must carry some evolutionary advantage.
This advantage is only increasing in the knowledge economy based on innovation.
See: Creativity,
Evolution and Mental Illness

Conclusion: Creative balance is the key! There is an optimum level of creativity for any given task. You can learn
to stimulate and extinguish creativity. Your genes will largely determine how
difficult it is for you to control your creativity. Your skills in that respect
may determine if you ascend from average mind towards genius without falling
into a variety of mental ailment traps

Before Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1438, there were
only 30,000 books in Europe. Most of these were related to the Bible and
religious writings. Gutenberg combined pieces of knowledge available at his time
into a breakthrough technology. The unique elements in his invention: a
mold with punch-stamped matrices, a type-metal alloy, a press similar to
those used in winemaking, and an oil-based printing ink. None of these
elements could be found in earlier Korean or Chinese print or in woodblock
printing. Little is known of the mental process which lead to the
invention. Most of what we know of Gutenberg comes from documents
recording his financial or legal troubles. At the time of his invention,
Gutenberg worked also on less groundbreaking technologies such as
polishing precious stones and mirror manufacturing. All we know about his
print invention is that he started
with the idea of producing blocks of metal with letters on them. The idea
might have been his own or picked up from others or from difficult to
track Asian sources. By combining existing technologies, he converted his
ideas into a working device and initiated one of the greatest revolution
in the history of mankind. Books became the world's first mass-produced
items. In 50 years since the invention, as many books
were produced as in the preceding millennium. Only after Gutenberg,
affordable books made literacy a highly-valued skill. In consequence,
sciences and technology went into a period of unprecedented growth. These
also sparked social change as well as global democratization in the 20th
century.

It is important to add that it was a Chinese blacksmith and alchemist
Pi Sheng who should be credited with the first documented invention of the
print in the 11th century. He produced Chinese ideograms in clay and baked
them in a fire. Then he stuck them on an iron plate with resins mixed with
wax. He would cover the ideograms with ink and impress them on paper.
Pi Sheng's invention, however, did not get far. Ideograms are too
meaningful. As a result there are 50,000 of them. Far too many for
convenience. Only the primitive Latin alphabet helped Gutenberg claim the
greatest invention of the millennium.

Gutenberg illustrates important aspects of creativity:

great breakthrough may being with a very simple association of ideas

the inventor himself may take long to realize the importance of his
own invention. If it was otherwise, why would Gutenberg jeopardize his
legacy by wasting time on gems and mirrors

the creative process is subject to multiple constraints that can
stifle the brightest idea for the most trifling reason. Gutenberg
would probably get nowhere had he had to deal with Chinese ideograms.
For someone to propose a simplified alphabet in China, it would take
an entirely different size of a creativity and social leap. Take a
look at the great idea of Esperanto. Via social and economic
mechanisms, it is English that became international lingua franca even
though Esperanto may be seven times as easy to learn and use

Enhancing creativity: summary

Using the above creative system models, let us quickly list the areas where
your creativity can receive a boost:

suitable state of mind: nurture your mental health, get enough
sleep, avoid stress, learn about the neurophysiology of the mental effort,
and work on understanding your own mental states to optimize the conditions
and the timing of creative
effort. In a healthy, well-managed individual, the best creative results can
be obtained early in the morning (e.g. after a cup of coffee). If you are rather
mentally slow in the morning and prefer to work late in the night, read: Good
sleep for good learning for reasons why you might be different

suitable environment: turn off the phone, lock your door, turn off
the radio, CD or MP3-player (even your favorite music can be distracting), and focus 100% on the studied subject. For inspiration turn to
brainstorming, "creative walking", creative blackboard doodles, Ideafisher,
or
use incremental reading with a heavy load of
related study material

time: for a breakthrough solution, give up as much of little things
in life and focus on your goal: keep on learning and thinking. One of the
most creative times in Newton's time was when he was forced to the province
as the bubonic plague closed his university in 1665. The Beagle trip gave Darwin
five years to digest new observations on variability of species.
Heisenberg's best time might be when he was recovering from a bout of hay
fever on the island of Helgoland in 1925. Seymour Cray found his work at CDC
so distractive that he had R&D facilities built out of town at Chippewa
Falls

motivation: this one is hard to develop. The vicious circle of bad
motivation comes from the fact that once there is no
motivation, you have no motivation to develop it. Luckily, the fact you are
reading this article may testify to the fact that your motivation is
sufficient (this may though not translate to self-discipline and execution yet).
Psychogenic motivation of a creative mind comes from an unshakeable
hierarchy of values, a lofty goal well-rooted in that hierarchy, and
understanding of self-discipline techniques. Sticking carefully to all
points of the Genius Checklist is critical
for boosting your motivation

curiosity: lifelong learning is a sine qua non of creativity. The
more you learn the more curious you become. What is irrelevant trivia to
most, may become a fascinating aspect of the universe for you. An average
man curses a rock he stumbles against. A great scientist can pick up a rock
and write a dissertation about it. This is exactly how the groundbreaking
theories of continental drift or plate tectonics begun. The more curiosity
you find in your mind, the better your creative prospects. If you doubt your
own curiosity, try incremental reading
on subjects that are interesting to you today. If you persist for some time
and hone your incremental reading skills, you curiosity may in time grow
beyond manageable limits. You will hopefully discover that even if there
were twenty of you, you could hardly lick the surface of interesting things
to do or study

knowledge: knowledge is the software of your creative engine. The
more knowledge you throw at a problem, the more new ideas and associations
you will be able to generate. Most of new associations is chaff but with scrupulous
recording habits you will learn how to sift the wheat. No major breakthrough
in science or engineering is produced in a knowledge vacuum. Human brain
works incrementally. It is basically unable of great leaps. Even Einstein
arrived at his breakthroughs in incremental manner by piecing the blocks of
the jigsaw puzzle produced by the non-relativistic physics of his time. Your
creative breakthrough in the area of chemistry may come while studying
architecture. See
also: Ideafisher

The shortest formula for enhanced creativity: quiet, focus, curiosity,
understanding the creative process, and inter-disciplinary knowledge. To
boost your creativity, keep fit, work on ensuring peaceful and creative working
conditions, learn to focus ("keep rats in control"), learn to boost
parallel processing ("unleash the rats"), add more time to creative
training, and keep on learning new things that could potentially be a source of
inspiration.

Creativity can be molded, enhanced and directed. This is the
basis of Ideafisher software.
Ideafisher is based on an immense database of facts, statements,
quotations and loose ideas. Combined with a set of direction questions, it
can be used by writers or managers to generate new ideas; either
individually or in a brainstorming group. The underlying assumption is
that once you intensely focus on a subject and look at it from most unusual
directions, you will be able to massively produce new associations and
generate new quality.

Incremental reading in SuperMemo
2004 can be employed in a similar fashion. In incremental reading, you
read short pieces of articles belonging to various domains. Those pieces
tend to juxtapose at random. The main
purpose of incremental reading is learning; however, if you intensely
focus on a single problem to solve, and appropriately select the reading
material, you can use incremental reading in the creative process.

The main differences between Ideafisher and incremental reading:

incremental reading was designed for the purpose of learning;
Ideafisher focuses specifically on generating new ideas

Ideafisher comes with a ready-made database of association cues; in
incremental reading you must import the relevant reading
material based on your focus of interest

Ideafisher can help you direct your creative effort towards a
specific goal; incremental reading tends to be more explorative in
nature. You can direct the exploration only by the appropriate selection of
the material as well as by using prioritization tools

Ideafisher capitalizes on improbable associations that might be
impossible with your present knowledge. In incremental reading, high
retention might lessen explorative creativity. However, overloaded incremental reading
(i.e. when you import far more knowledge than you can learn) may result in a substantial decrease
in knowledge retention. Such a decrease may be unwelcome in the learning
process; however, it further increases associational and recall effort
that is highly stimulating in the creative process

In the 1970s, Laszlo Polgar, a teacher from Hungary, concluded that all normal children
could be driven
to a genius level with sufficient attention and training. If this does not
happen on a regular basis, he claimed, it only comes from parental inattention and
lack of patience. An average parent is busy with her or his own life and does not
devote sufficient time to raising the kids. According to Polgar, it is easy for
a parent to say: "Oh, this child has no genius!" and do nothing
further. Interestingly, Polgar had no impressive scientific credentials in the field of
child care and education (unlike Boris Sidis), so when he decided to experiment with his own kids, many accused him
of using dictatorial methods for the case of a genius show. Few would take Polgar seriously, his methods even led to
a clash with the Hungarian government. For details of Polgar experiment see Polgar sisters.

Polgar's optimistic claim does not leave much place for genetics.
Throughout history, most prodigy training occurred in families with high
average IQ. Hence it is again hard to separate nature from nurture.

If genetics comes into play in limiting genius, it is less so in the
area of the sheer brain power, processing speed, associative power,
number of neurons, creative power, etc. Human genius seems to be by far more limited by
the personality profile which has a strong genetic background. In simple
terms, if the child is ready and willing to be trained for genius, it
will likely succeed. The main obstacle is in the fact that a child may
not want to accept a heavy load of training.

Except for mental disorders, important personality factors that limit
overall creativity include low stress tolerance, aggression,
impulsivity, depression, and the resulting poor motivation. On the other hand, traits
such as curiosity, perfectionism, runaway creativity, and compulsiveness may enhance development
if properly channeled and rationalized.

Such largely inborn factors as the overall level of serotonin or
dopamine in the
brain can determine stress tolerance, probability of suicide, as well as aggressive and violent
behaviors.

Destructive personality factors are highly correlated with each
other. For example, non-virgin adolescent girls are 6 times more likely
to attempt suicide, 6 times more likely to use alcohol, and 18 times as
likely to run away from home as compared with their counterparts who were
able to delay their early sexual experience.

Early signs of genius personality are best described as the
rage to master. By 1899 the Wright brothers had read all books in their local
library that were relevant to their interest in flying. They decided to write to the Smithsonian
Institution for suggestions as to further reading in aeronautics. This
unorthodox approach is quite typical of young prodigies and future Nobel
Prize winners. With those personality traits, the job of a parent is
greatly simplified. Actually, it is often not parents that push
prodigies, but prodigies that push parents who may often be worried by
their child's unusual hobbies (e.g. dissecting dead animals to study
anatomy).

Nathan Mhyrvold, former chief scientist at Microsoft, claims that a great programmer is worth 10,000 times more than an average
programmer. The number may well be exaggerated, but studies indeed show
that efficiency comparisons between programmers yield much
larger numbers that one might expect by studying their IQ. I had a
great pleasure to work with a number of programmers, those amazing
whiz-kids and those who slowly slog through the code. Those who program
structurally with lots of foresight and those who produce tons of
spaghetti code that is impossible to maintain. If I was to name the most
important factor that differentiates programmers, I would choose
personality. There are those who slug it out red-eyed until the early
morning until they see the problem solved. They seem not to see the
world beyond their problem to solve. There are also those who
impatiently peek at their watch at 14:55 to see when they can rush back
to their families. The latter are more likely to wade through manuals
and ask for assistance once they get stuck with the problem. They are
rather impassioned and by far easier to depress with difficulty. The young red-eyed
enthusiast will rather not eat and not sleep than give up the quest for
the solution. In early stages of their development, the red-eyed geeks may start with awfully
buggy code but in time they will spurt ahead and develop healthy programming
habits. In 4-6 years they may be in Mhyrvold's 10,000 league. Those who
do not show passion for programming will never reach the necessary
levels of concentration necessary to resolve pieces of programming
puzzles in their mind. Those resolved puzzles gradually build strong and
highly abstract models of universal algorithmic solutions to most of
logic problems a programmer is likely to encounter on his way. In other
words, knowledge and skills seem secondary to the personality factor
here. The excellent programmer will begin his career with entangled code full of bugs and poor design but with passing months he will rapidly
change his style, organize, improve day by day, and surprise others, After
years, he may be unbeatable, the poorly motivated one stagnates at the plateau
level and pulls it off from day to day.

Motivation and belief in one's abilities may be a key to sustained
development in a young man. Ask an 18-year old: What
problem would you like to solve? What is important? Often, you will get no
conclusive response! Then suggest to the young man to become the world's best footballer or get
the newest Lamborghini and you will notice that his life is not as
goalless as it seems at first. However, if you ask: How do you want
to get to your footballer-Lamborghini goal? You will get no response
again. The reason: the young man does not believe there is a snowballs
chance in hell he will ever reach those goals. At the same time, minor
goals in-between do not seem worth the effort. The net result: the young man plays
videogames and gets nowhere. This is why rage to master, self-discipline and will
power may be the factor that will make or break the genius in a young
man.

Inability to cope with stress can also stifle creativity. Stress takes your mind away from
the creative problems to solve and makes you focus on yourself and petty problems
that are not worth your attention. It affects your health and your
self-discipline. It is also detrimental to the
growth of the nervous tissue and memory consolidation (see: The
Medical Basis of Stress).

Lewis Terman, the precursor of IQ tests, agrees that the greatest differences
between of gifted and normal kids is their greater drive to achieve and the greater mental and social adjustment.

Dr Ellen Winner in her book Gifted Children (1996) presents her analysis on what
makes the personality of a future genius. She tends to disagree that all kids
can be made into geniuses and puts a special emphasis on the need for a child to
exhibit a natural rage to master. Prodigies show obsessive fascination with a
certain content such as numbers, visual patters, auditory stimulation, symmetry,
etc. This fascination begets curiosity and an indomitable will to master selected
domains of activity.

A Hungarian teacher Laszlo Polgar had a theory about child-raising:
every child can be made into a genius with sufficient training. Those
ideas solidified when he got married. He decided to test his theory on
his own children. As it often is the case with far-out ideas, Laszlo did
not get much sympathy from others. When he started putting his ideas in
practice with his three little daughters, Laszlo was accused of using
his kids as guinea pigs. His determination ultimately lead to a clash
with Hungarian government who attempted to stop him in his tracks. One
day, armed government officials knocked at Polgar's door. His experiment
was considered potentially abusive. Laszlo evoked his "parental
immunity" and proceeded with his educational experiment. He and his
wife Klara taught and supervised the daughters solely on their own. At
some point, it became obvious that specialization may bring more
tangible and measurable results. Mathematics and languages could be the
fields in which Polgar's daughters could develop genius. However, the
ultimate choice came by accident. When the eldest Susan (Zsuzsa) was only three
and a half years old, by accident she discovered chess. She asked Laszlo
what chess was, and soon she and her father where exploring intellectual
challenges of the game. Early indications were that Susan could learn
chess quite quickly, and it is hard to say if her father's prior
training or some inborn predisposition helped her make fast progress.
Laszlo decided to focus on chess which is objective and makes it easy to
measure the accomplishment in championships, tournaments and
player's rankings. Chess may not be as important to the future of this
planet as physics or medicine; however, it was an excellent material for
Polgar's experiment, which on its own could yield highly valuable
insights into child's upbringing: whatever the experiment's final outcome.
Laszlo explained chess to Susan like he was telling a fable, and she soon acquired a
natural love for the game. Some six years later, Polgar's experiment
brought first amazing fruits. Susan broke into the Guinness book of
records as the youngest chess master at age 10. At age 12 she became a
world champion for girls under 16. By age 15 she was the strongest
player in the world in her age category! From there on, Susan progress
bears typical trademarks of a young prodigy: a unique mix of genius on
one hand, and problems to fit the gray reality on the other. In the heart of Susan's problem was
her struggle against the male establishment in chess. For ages, male and female
chess used to be disjoint worlds. Susan refused to accept sexist
divisions and struggled for equal rights to participating in male
tournaments. She became the third woman ever to earn the male
grandmaster title. Despite her determination to avoid sex differences, Susan decided to try for the Woman's
World Championship. She won it easily in
1996. She was later stripped of the title when she refused to play her
mandatory challenge matches in the period when she became a young
mother. Her battle with FIDE to regain her title is another example of a
mismatch between feisty genius and the established rules and tradition (she won the lawsuit against FIDE in March 2001 but did
not get her title back). Despite appearances, Susan is a nice,
down-to-earth and complete human being. Besides Hungarian, she speaks 7
other languages (Bulgarian, English, Esperanto, French, German, Russian
and Spanish). Polgar experiment worked! The theory of training
for genius scored one of the most powerful case studies in history. We
have no way of knowing Susan's fate had her father had different
approach to education. Susan's husband observes however: Had Susan found a thermometer at home
instead of a chess set, perhaps we would have cures for cancer and AIDS
today.

Interestingly, Susan's success does not complete the Polgar sisters
story. Younger sister Sofia (Zsofia) shocked the world in 1989 at the
age of 14. In a chess tournament in Rome, she defeated a string of
Soviet Grandmasters and reached the highest performance rating of any
chess player (male or female) in any tournament in history (2879 for
scoring 8.5 of 9). In 1999, Sofia married to a Georgian chess player and
now lives in Israel with chess lower on her priority list.

Last but not least, the youngest of the Polgar sisters, Judit (born
1976) is an amazing and still ongoing story on her own. She started
learning chess at age 5. At age 11, Judit earned an International Master
title, i.e. at earlier age than Bobby Fischer or Gary Kasparov! At age 13 she was
the World Under 14 Champion for boys and FIDE's highest rated woman. At
age 15 she beat Bobby Fischer's record by becoming the youngest
grandmaster ever at 15 years and 4 months (in 1958, Fischer became gm,
at 15 years and 6 months). In 1993, at age 17, Judit defeated former world
champion Boris Spassky 5.5-4.5 in a 10-game exhibition match. In 1998 she
beat FIDE world champion Karpov 5-3 and also became the first woman
to win the US Open Championship. She is also the only woman to ever
reach the top ten FIDE list (see the current Top
100 ranking). Today, Judit is the strongest of the three Polgar
sisters. She leads women rankings by a safe margin (see the current Top
50 women ranking) and may one day become a World Champion (male or
female). She played Kasparov in May 2000 over the Internet and lost. Like her sisters, her meteoritic rise has ultimately
plateaued as she got married in September 2000. To track her progress
see: http://www.controltheweb.com/polgar/news.htm

It is known that chessplayers often experience various psychological
problems. The level of concentration and the game stakes often lead to
exposing and amplifying aggressive behavior. Except for an unflinching
drive to win, the Polgar sisters show very little of that in their lives
outside the chess world. Polgar sisters will for long remain a valuable
case study for understanding the role of personality and training in
developing genius qualities

Could indeed any normal child be made a genius with sufficient training?
Unfortunately, except for major intellectual deficiencies or physical
disabilities at birth, there is
also a personality factor. Not all children will be able to efficiently develop
the rage to master. Of creativity factors listed earlier, curiosity,
motivation and the suitable state of mind may be hard to develop in some. All
great geniuses showed remarkable curiosity. Curiosity does not have to show itself
in the area of sciences or art. If it extends to other areas of life, it bodes
well for mental growth. If a child obsessively
collects teenage magazines or devours news about pop-stars, you can take it in good part. This sort of curiosity can easily be
converted into a more
productive force. A more worrying sign would be to see a young person mindlessly
stare in the ceiling. Motivation may be the hardest personality component to
develop. It has a strong neurohormonal basis that is not yet entirely
understood. Depression and bipolar disorders clearly show how the levels of
hormones affect motivation. The manic state may often lead to enhanced
creativity. Depression is a powerful inhibitor of mental processes and
creativity. Then there is an illusive skill of delayed gratification. Those who
are most successful are people
who are able to wait for the reward. This is true in nearly all professions
(Mike Tyson might be a rare exception in a profession were instinctive behavior
might actually give one some edge). Impulsive people might differ in neural
activity of the prefrontal cortex, and the component of the reward system, the
nucleus accumbens. To a large degree, the impulsiveness is genetically
determined. The skill of delaying gratification is particularly precious in creative individuals. Gregor Mendel's
research in genetics was entirely based on scientific curiosity, and subject to
a religious regimen of rigorous observation. There was no reward expected and no
reward granted (in his lifetime). His groundbreaking findings waited 35 years to
be rediscovered while Mendel himself focused on his duties related to being
promoted to the position of a monastery abbot.
The ability to delay gratification can be easily recognized by the parent. It
can also be measured scientifically as well as improved by training. Children
that are poor at delaying gratification are also poorly organized and show
little stress tolerance. They tend to be shy, introvert, and make social
contacts slowly. Some will show bully characteristics. On the other hand,
children that exhibit better ability to delay gratification will also be more
verbally fluent, more skilled in rationalizing their behavior, more attentive
and able to concentrate. They are better at planning, more curious and open to
new experiences. Early forms of training should be based on showing the
relationship between the delay of gratification and the potential increase in
the size of the reward ("if you do not eat this cake, you will get money
that will let you buy more cakes or ... whatever you decide to buy"). In
short, the ability to master one's own emotional drives may be as important as
the standard school curriculum.

A blind belief that every normal child can be trained to be a genius can be
dangerous if there is a disparity between parent's expectations and the actual
results, esp. if the parent is not emotionally ready to accept setbacks. There
are quite a number of cases of prodigy kids that reached astonishing skills in
young age only to fizzle out later in life. The most notorious, although
frequently misrepresented, case is that of William James Sidis. His father,
Boris Sidis started with similar assumptions as Laszlo Polgar. His training plan
worked out great in the early years of young William. However, his
rebellious nature led him to a lifestyle that many considered wasteful,
esp. in the context of his amazing mental skills. In essence though, there is
nothing wrong with a prodigy child leading a withdrawn or "normal"
life.

Some sources claim William James Sidis (born 1898) was a genius that
has reached the highest estimated IQ of all people in history. Yet you will not
find his name among Nobel Prize winners or famous writers. William James Sidis is
important for our analysis of genius mostly due to the fact that he is
often quoted as a textbook example of an early prodigy burnout. Authors
quote his life story to warn parents against being overly zealous in
bringing up their prodigy children. Williams James Sidis became a poster
child of the adage: Early to ripe, early to rot. His case is
juxtaposed with that of Polgar sisters, Norbert Wiener, or John Stuart
Mill. Incidentally, the latter is also attributed by some with the highest IQ in
history. Note, however, that the concept of IQ has been
developed decades after Mill's death in 1873

Formula for genius by Boris Sidis

To understand William James Sidis case, we need to look back to the days of
his grandfather Moses Sidis, an Ukrainian Jew who was a well-to-do
merchant and an intellectual. Moses Sidis, along the family tradition of
early tutelage, took fatherly care of his child Boris Sidis born in 1867
in Kiev. Boris Sidis was a prodigy on his own and showed an early
interest in poetry and languages. His childhood experiences have
probably influenced his way of thinking on the way he would bring up his
own children. His life story also shows traces of an inclination for
being a social rebel. During the czarist pogroms of the Jews in the
1880s, Boris was arrested for teaching peasants the skills of reading
and writing. He spent two years in solitary confinement and was subject
to severe torture. This may have subsequently influenced his nature of
an intellectual with a profound scorn of ignorance. Hopeless and
penniless, Boris Sidis emigrated to the US and quickly become a
respected physician, innovative psychologist and a pioneer in the field
of psychopathology. He was an intellectual of wide interests and
extensive reading. He wrote profusely on a variety of subject showing
deep concern for the future of society. In Philistine
and Genius (1911) he wrote: "We spend on barrack and prisons
more than we do on schools and colleges. What is the level of a
civilization in which the cost of crime and war far exceeds that of the
education of its future citizens?"). His writings are peppered
with radical ideas that might have been but did not have to be the root of his problems in
bringing up William James Sidis. Boris Sidis writes: "the school-system should be
abolished and with it should go the present psychologizing educator, the
schoolmaster and the schoolma'am". Boris Sidis showed
deep-rooted contempt to mindless memorization, irrational tradition,
superstition, myths, creeds and dogmas. An opposition to irrationality
should be harmless unless it was tainted with negative emotion. In Philistine
and Genius (Chapter
II), Sidis wrote angrily:

... uncritical belief in authority, meaningless imitation of
jingles and gibberish, memorization of mother-goose wisdom, repetition
of incomprehensible prayers and articles of creed, unintelligent aping
of good manners, silly games, prejudices and superstitions and fears
of the supernormal and supernatural, are censured in adults, why
should we approve their cultivation in the young? "At home and at
school we drill into the child's mind uncritical beliefs in stories
and tales, fictions and figments, fables and myths, creeds and dogmas
which poison the very sources of the child's mind. At home and at
school we give the child over as a prey to all sorts of fatal germs of
mental diseases and moral depravity

Boris dedicated a
substantial effort to making his son an example of what education can do
to a young human brain: "Education must aim at the bringing out
of the genius in man"; "I appeal to you, fathers and mothers,
and to you, liberal-minded readers, asking you to turn your attention to
the education of your children, to the training of the young generation
of future citizens".

Unfortunately, Boris's early success with
bringing up William James showed little warning of sad things to come. In
the spirit of avoiding "uncritical belief in authority", his
son went on to defy the authority of others', including that of his own father's. Ultimately
William James Sidis estranged his parents. Unorthodox father, Boris
Sidis, died suddenly in 1923 of a cerebral hemorrhage at an early age of
56

Amazing prodigy

Young William James Sidis was tutored relentlessly from the cradle. He could read English at the age of 3. He amazed
everyone around at the age of four when he would use a typewriter to
write in English and in French. When he was five, he could already speak
five languages. He would read Plato in Greek. At the age of nine he was
ready to pass entrance exams to Harvard but was not admitted as not
being mature enough for college life. At 11, after three years of trying and being refused on the grounds
of his youth, young Sidis entered Harvard. His stardom begun with a
lecture about "Four-Dimensional Bodies". After the
lecture, Prof. Daniel Comstock of MIT hailed him to be a material for
the greatest mathematician of the 20th century. New York Times picked up
a story and gave him national prominence.
Norbert Wiener, William's Harvard contemporary, wrote in 1953 about the
lecture: "The
talk would have done credit to a first- or second-year graduate student
of any age. Sidis had no access to existing sources so that the talk
represented the triumph of the unaided efforts of a very brilliant child"

Prodigy downfall

At Harvard, young Sidis appeared to be rather poorly adapted emotionally and socially. His colleagues
considered him to be an eccentric. He was reclusive and did not make many
friends. He is said to had suffered from various mental problems at
that time and had to be treated in his father's
Psychotherapeutic Institute. In 4.5 years, William James Sidis nevertheless graduated
from Harvard cum
laude in 1914. At about the same time, other Harvard prodigies
graduated without receiving a fraction of attention granted to Sidis. The
list includes Norbert Wiener, Buck Fuller, and Roger Sessions. On the
graduation day, Sidis was in the company of students such as Julius
Spencer Morgan, Gilbert Seldes, Vinton Freedley, and Laurence Schwab.
Sidis told a reporter "I want to live the
perfect life, and the only way to
live the perfect life is to live it in seclusion". He
went on to study law at Harvard Law School, which he quit shortly before
graduation. In 1918,
Sidis began teaching mathematics at Rice University, Texas. Rice students
would ridicule their childish teacher for eight months. Sidis
was constantly annoyed with the attention of the media. Not feeling well
in academia, William James Sidis left his academic pursuits once and for
all in 1918. In the
meantime, he espoused leftist ideas and became a budding Marxist. In
1918, he was arrested during a May Day anti-war rally in his home town
of Boston. He was
accused of inciting a riot and sentenced for 1.5 years in jail. With his
father's backing, the sentence was not served. However, young genius
Willam James Sidis disappeared from the public eye. In 1923, a reporter
found him in New York working a menial job. Sidis told him he was not a
genius people want him to be. He also declared his wish to become
anonymous in his life. Sidis expressed a simple desire to focus on undemanding jobs that
give him more satisfaction. And that seemed to be the end of William
James Sidis miracle.

In 1937, the New Yorker dug out the young prodigy story again and
run a piece entitled "April
Fool". In the article, Sidis is
reported as saying: "I hated Harvard (...) anyone who sends
his son to college is a fool -- a boy can learn more in a public library".
The article paints a picture of an incredible young Harvard genius that
went on to live a life of a low-paid bookkeeper. Sidis considered the
article a gross violation of his privacy and sued ultimately receiving a small out-of-court
settlement (see: US
Supreme Court decision)

One of the reasons for lasting ridicule of Sidis was one of the books
he wrote. While most
people never write any book in their lifetime, when it transpired that
Sidis, the future greatest mathematician, wrote a lengthy hobby book
about streetcar transfers, the eyebrows went up. A transfer is a piece
of paper given to passengers who want to take a particular transfer
route. Sidis collected streetcar transfers obsessively, and considered it a
"reasonable" hobby, which he called a peridromophila. His
classification of transfers was Aristotelean. His scrupulousness
Darwinian. Yet, the book published in 1926 under a pseudonym of
Frank Folupa was not found to be a reason for admiration. Supposedly, this was "the
most boring book ever written". Throughout his life, Sidis
struggled to escape the publicity and the aura of expectation. To no
avail. When he died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1944
at the age of 46, he sparked yet another suspicion in reference to early
prodigy training: "too much thinking can harm your brain,
too". Sidis's father died early of the same affliction (see
above)

Fallen star or an anonymous giant

It is not true that Sidis contributed little to
society beyond providing a remarkable study case for the growth and decline of
genius.
The only book he published under his own name was The
Animate and the Inanimate in 1925 at the age of 27 (as befits a true
rebel, he argued spuriously therein against the second law of
thermodynamics). In 1979, another giant
of the centry, Buckminster
Fuller rediscovered the book and wrote in a letter:
"Imagine my excitement and joy on being handed
the xerox of Sidis' 1925 book, in which he clearly predicts the black
hole" (Subramanyan
Chandrasekhar came up with the idea only a few years later). Incidentally,
Buck Fuller was Sidis's classmate at Harvard and was saddened by William's
story. Unlike Sidis, Fuller bloomed late into his life. In 1927 at the age of 32,
bankrupt and jobless, he was on a verge of suicide. However, he decided to
embark on an experiment: what a single individual can contribute to change the
world and benefit all humanity. Documenting his life scrupulously in a
half-century daily diary, Fuller went on to produce miracles of the mind (an
array of inventions and 47
honorary doctorates are just a drop in the bucket of Buck's achievement).

Multiple studies indicate that young prodigies end up better adapted
to life in society than their peers (incl. the famous Terman
Study). Sidis case is an exception rather than a rule. One theory
says that an increase in IQ is welcome only up to a certain point beyond
which it leads to extreme attitudes and social problems. Another theory
says that there is an optimum span of time in which a domineering father
figure helps child's development. The inflection point comes at the moment when a young man
crystallizes his own views on how to run his life. Once father's and
child's goals diverge, fatherly domination may spark negative emotions
in immature mind. Instead of fostering further growth, this emotions may
channel young energy in the wrong direction. The spiral of negative
emotions escalates and parent-child partnership becomes a struggle for
dominance in goals and values. Parental dominance shows up, for example,
in a strong correlation between the
occupation of parents and children (e.g. among doctors, lawyers,
musicians, etc.).
In Sidis's case, fatherly supervision may have gone beyond this
theoretical inflection point, and William James Sidis was
transformed from an admired prodigy to a haunted freak forced into
behaviors incongruent with his mental profile and his own set of values.
There is no hard evidence Boris Sidis made any major upbringing errors. His
unrelenting tutoring and scorn of ignorance might have put too much
burden on William, yet this could well be measured only in
retrospect. Boris's radical views might have affected the family
atmosphere: less love, more rigor (in contrast to warm atmosphere of
families of Bohr, Darwin, etc.). The theory of reserve energy
might have pushed Boris to neglect natural
circadian underpinnings of healthy mental effort. Early in the 20th
century, the knowledge of the function of sleep in learning was little.
Even today, many students fall into the treacherous trap of belief that
you can learn more by adding study hours by cutting down on sleep (this
is how the cruel myth of polyphasic sleep
gained a foothold in numerous young lives). Kathleen Montour believes that Sidis Fallacy has badly affected the
education of the gifted children. In her view, a rational approach to
special education for the gifted children can only lead to positive
results, and the main problem on the way is, what she calls, a creator
parent with excessive ambition for the child's future in proportion
to the knowledge of the psychology of growth. Yet, as a psychiatrist,
Boris Sidis could not have been better primed to be a good educator. The
case may never be answered satisfactorily

Young rebels

The world is populated with young rebel geniuses. They tend to be
radical. After all, only genius mind fully exposes the imperfections and
contradictions of
the surrounding world. Young geniuses power rebel environmentalist
movements, animal-right groups, open source community, human rights
organizations or groups for legalizing narcotic drugs. They espouse
socialism, communism, or ... vegetarianism. They struggle to abolish
nuclear power, GM foods, human cloning, urban sprawl, MacDonalds, air-polluting car,
stem cell research, animal testing, etc. They often abhor the riches of Bill Gates, look with horror at George
W. Bush presidency, or glorify Linus Tornvalds, Mike "Gorbie"
Gorbachev or Nelson Mandela. Driven by similar
but often not completely crystallized motives, they join opposing
camps. Some end up fighting for monolingual world, others
struggle for "language ecology" against the "linguistic
imperialism of English". Some will fight for the United States of
the World, while others see globalization as a veil under which global
corporations exploit poorer countries in Africa, Asia and South America.
Those radical minds usually end up being highly productive and balanced
individuals. They learn to temper negative emotions and start to favor
maths over myths.

William James Sidis has definitely grown to be a young rebel. It is
difficult to diagnose how much of his attitude was pathological or
neurotic. His fascination with Indian tribes and support for anonymous contributions to society could have concealed his true opus vitae. The
peer-review pressure and publish-or-perish principles have driven many
bright minds away from academic pursuits. A contemporary little-known dyslectic
rebel genius Dr
Robert Skoyles writes: "I prefer to be without an income and
academic address. I would rather starve than be ignorant. I am puzzled
why many bright people allow themselves to be time-lobotomized by the
constraints of an academic career. At university, I witnessed many a
bright and curious student eager to know give that up to prosper in the
academic treadmill. What had once been a means now either swallowed them
up or slowly seeped in and became an end. They became deadwood
preoccupied with marriage, mortgages and a pension".
Doubtlessly, similar sentiments were common to William James Sidis. His
complete story has not been told

Conclusions

The case of William James Sidis contributed to several dangerous
misconceptions. It is not true that child prodigies inevitably burn out
with time. There is little evidence to confirm that brain tumors or brain hemorrhage
may be caused by "too much thinking". Just the opposite, most
research indicates that learning is a blessing for the brain's health. Sidis case shows how easy
it is to propagate rumor and how difficult it is to recover the truth.
Along the rules of memetics, the self-comforting story of a fallen prodigy
spreads like wildfire. The carriers of the message seem to say "I
have not been a prodigy and I like it that way"

Lessons learned from Sidis case:

Personality is critical for developing true genius. Lack of social
skills can ruin creativity. It can also ruin the life of a genius

Genius is a virtue in itself and it does not require a spotlight.
The attention genius attracts may actually inhibit creativity.
Genius is its own reward, and does not need to strive for
gratification

Parents need to exercise utmost caution when pushing their
prodigies toward success. Ignorance is the source of trouble here. A
modern parent needs to study child care literature and keep up to
date with the principles of developmental psychology

In contrast, another prodigy child of early 20th century, Norbert Wiener,
went on to establish the science of cybernetics and a new way of looking at the
surrounding world. Incidentally, the computer metaphor used to model human
genius in this article, is derived directly from the approach proposed by
Wiener: using systems theory to represent reality and simplify its analysis.

In conclusion, Polgar's statement "every normal child can be trained to
be a genius" is largely correct. However, the main stumbling block on the
way towards accomplishing the goal is the mental profile of the child as well as
the interaction with its tutors. Genetic limitations will manifest less in the
overall intellectual potential and more visibly in overcoming psychological
obstacles such as motivation, curiosity, delayed gratification, self-control,
discipline, etc. The neural network of the human brain is highly plastic and
compensatory. It's qualities, reduced in more severe disorders on the like of
Down syndrome, are less of a limiting factor when compared with the child's
personality.

Every normal child can be trained to be a genius as long
as utmost attention is paid to its appropriate psychological development.
Some personality profiles may be particularly hard to crack, and an
intense "genius training program" can also pose major developmental
dangers

For genius accomplishments and high creativity, you need to pay lots of
attention to the right working and living environment. If your job is full of stress, human
conflict, anxiety, disruption, etc. your creative potential will easily go to
waste! In modern society, nothing pays back better than genius, creativity and
novel ideas. It is better to get a poorly paid job that will let you grow
than to enslave your mental potential in an environment that will pull you into
the proverbial rate race.

Here is a basic checklist for inspecting your conditions for creative effort:

sleep: are you able to get as many hours of sleep as your body
needs? Are you able to go to sleep then when you feel sleepy? Lack of sleep,
poor sleeping conditions, or wrong sleeping hours are top causes of suppressed creativity. Without meeting your sleeping needs, you may
not even live up to a quarter of your creative potential! See: Good
sleep for good learning

stress: are you able to isolate yourself from the surrounding rat
race? Are you surrounded with good people of good hearts? Stress along sleep
deprivation are the most important suppressors of creativity. When you leave
for the toilet,
your brain should still live with the creative problem that consumes most of
your attention; it should not stray to ruminate over a conflict at work, or in the family, or in a traffic jam. The damage done by
stress is not only related to lost time and attention, but also due to lost
health, and the negative impact of stress hormones on memory consolidation and
neuronal degeneration. In contrast, serotonin, the "optimistic
hormone", increases neurogenesis. See: The
Medical Basis of Stress

health: never skimp on time you should devote to exercise. Quality
circulation and a healthy respiratory system are needed to nourish your
brain during a creative effort and during sleep. Stick to a healthy diet. If you are
overweight you may miss lots of quality creative time by simply being less
alert and energetic. Smoking is a bad short-term alertness booster, over
years, your mental power will be curtailed dramatically. If you believe smoking
helps your attention, note that similar effects can be accomplished with
exercise; without inhaling a carcinogenic mix of poisons (see: QuitNet.org)

The roots of Darwin's scrupulous scientific research can be traced
back to his childhood. Except for the death of his mother when he was
just eight years old, Darwin's childhood was a truly golden one. He was
taken care of by his sisters and an older brother Erasmus as well as his
extensive family. Not by accident, at 22 he was chosen to take part in
the voyage of the Beagle as an unpaid naturalist. At that time, he was already a very capable
and knowledgeable biologist. In December 1831, Darwin sailed on the
Beagle from Plymouth. The long voyage was planned for two years but
ultimately lasted five. Throughout the trip Darwin kept meticulous logs
and collected numerous specimens on geology, botany and zoology. The
isolation of the trip provided Darwin with excellent opportunity for
creative thinking and detailed analysis of the observed phenomena (even
though he was seasick most of the time). He
was as good at theorizing as he was scrupulous at observation.

The idea of biological evolution that is largely attributed to Darwin
was not new. Many authors before
Darwin hinted at the possibility. Following a natural intuition, Lamarck had even drawn a
diagram that showed the transition from simple to more complex
organisms. After his Beagle trip, Darwin had his evolutionary ideas well
established; however, it took him two decades to crystallize the details
in a form he thought acceptable for publication. Both socially and
legally, his views could bring Darwin trouble. As early as in 1837,
his notes included remarks on how species change from place to place and
from one era to another. In 1838 Darwin read Thomas Malthus' An Essay on the Principle of
Population. Malthus argued that populations grow at geometric speed
while the food supply increases arithmetically. This lead Darwin to
formulate his struggle for survival principles in which favorable
species variations would be preserved while the unfavorable would fall
prey to evolutionary elimination.

An extremely important component of creative thinking is the ability to
focus entirely on a problem to solve. The Beagle trip provided such an
opportunity. After the trip, Darwin was fortunate to be able to work
alone at home. The privilege of being an independent scientist was quite
unique in Victorian England. Family endowments made it possible for
Darwin to focus on his creative pursuits without the need to seek
employment and worrying about down-to-earth concerns.
Darwin also took science to his family life when in a scrupulously
scientific manner he proposed to his cousin Emma Wedgwood. His choice
made it possible to spend forty years on creative investigation despite
the fact that his marriage with Emma resulted in procreation of ten
children (three of which died at young age). Only his health, which may
have suffered as a result of his Beagle tripe, could have been a limiting
factor. For decades, however, Darwin relentlessly persisted in his endeavor.

Part of his success can also be attributed to his social
skills. He did not want to publish his theories early knowing these
could alienate many. He realized that the theory of evolution stood in
sharp contrast to the teachings of the church (esp. the literal
interpretation of the book of Genesis). He was able to work with other
scientists without offending their feelings. He even had to restrain his
comments at home as his wife Emma was a devout Christian who could not
accept the heretic claims of the organic evolution.

What ultimately prompted Darwin to make his work public was a
paper by Alfred Russel Wallace, which indicated that Wallace has
independently arrived to similar conclusions as Darwin himself. Darwin
read the paper in 1858 and was disheartened by the fact that his effort
could have been preempted. A month later, Wallace and Darwin announced
their theories in a joint paper read to the Linnean Society of London on
July 1, 1858. A year later, Darwin's On the Origin of Species
by Means of Natural Selection was published. This was one of the most
influential scientific works in human history. Throughout the rest of
his prolific life, Darwin worked on explaining the implications of his
theory and on easing the acceptance of the direct link between humans
and animals.

Even today, Darwin's theory is hard to swallow to religious
fundamentalists. Creationists oppose evolution as being contrary to the
Bible. In 1999, despite the official stand of the Vatican,
fundamentalist Christians on the Kansas board of education removed
evolution from the state science curriculum. As a result of public
criticism and ridicule, board members who supported de-emphasizing
evolution were defeated in GOP primaries in August 2000. In 2001, the
new board voted 7 to 3 for the new standards to again require the
secondary schools to teach evolution.

Darwin's scientific genius changed the world. The roots of his creative
success could be found in his rich upbringing, extensive and always
growing knowledge, decades of freedom to focus on his research, social
skills in maneuvering the acceptance of his theory in evangelical England,
unrelenting and scrupulous spadework, and persistence through difficulty

Human emotion is a powerful driving force. It can be highly creative
as well as highly destructive. It could drive a young Nazi to a red-hot
frenzy of hatred, but it could also drive Einstein's brain to awe and admiration of
the symmetry of nature. Human emotion is often rationalized, i.e. it may lay
at the root of an endeavor that is otherwise covered up with rational
excuses. Again, rationalized emotion can result in a disaster or can prevent
it. Hitler's blind hate, backed-up with pseudoscientific
rationalization, lead to the holocaust. At the same time, the heroic
global defense of the world peace in the 1940s would not be possible
without the sense of outrage against those who disrespected the
principles of peaceful coexistence. Emotions are very difficult to
control and will often determine a person's chances for success or
failure. Negative emotions, such as anger, are counterproductive and
contribute little to a person's growth. Positive emotions, such as
well-dosed passion, help one overcome obstacles that are bound to be
found on any race-course. Emotions are also transitive and tend to
amplify in social groups. Anger
begets anger. Cordiality begets cordiality. Your effort to beget
positive emotions, in suitable circumstances, will send positive ripples
through social circles you interact with.

One of the basic premises of developing a genius brain is: learn
to capitalize on positive emotions and circumvent negative emotions.

Emotion management skills may actually be the most important factor
that will determine if a person will or will not develop its full genius
potential. As argued throughout this article, personality factor seems
overall more important than low-level information processing powers of the
brain. Negative emotions are probably the number one cause of the
scarcity of genius in industrialized nations.

The power of emotion comes from the fact that they are wired into the
low-level brain structures that cannot easily be controlled by rational
thinking originating in the prefrontal cortex. An angry individual can
command its brain to cool down; however, it cannot instantly reduce the
level of adrenaline that has already been released into the bloodstream.
A drug addict can decide rationally to give up drugs, but when the physical
effects of craving hit his system, his rational brain is often powerless.

In the course of evolution, the emotional circuits of the brain
played a critical role in survival. Emotions help translate the inner
needs of the organism into behavioral modes and actions. Once your blood
glucose level drops down, one of the outcomes will be the activation of
the appetite center. As a result, thinking of food will pervade all your
actions. With time, all your attempts at genius endeavor may fade into
insignificance as your brain will keep on reverberating the hunger
message. In this case, your need for food is converted into hunger, and
your brain is turned into a food-hunting mode. Similar mechanisms are
involved in satisfying thirst or reproductive needs.

Human mental and emotional characteristics are strongly rooted
in genetics and may limit or enhance intellectual development. It takes only a few generations of controlled breeding to influence the
fierceness of dogs. Not-so-natural genetic selection of modern societies
promotes a wide spectrum of behavioral characteristics. As a result, we
all are driven by a mix of emotions that may be either valuable or
unwelcome.

All healthy human beings are prone to experience negative emotions. However, in
the course of upbringing most of us gain a sufficient rational control
over emotion centers. Nobody has seen the pope swinging his crosier. And
pictures of Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe against the UN General
Assembly pulpit in 1960 belong to the footage of the century.
Incidentally, Khrushchev
is said to have been in full control of his emotions and put his show up purely
for political reasons. Apart from a strong genetic component, upbringing
also plays a huge role in the way a human being copes with emotion. A
recent US study found that children who spend long hours in day
care are more likely to be aggressive, disobedient, and defiant. Those
negative characteristics were correlated with the number of hours spent
by kids in day care centers. At the same time children in high-quality
day care programs got better scores in problem solving tests than
children who stayed at home.

Entirely different emotion management techniques must be used for
different emotions. Some emotions are generated at high levels in the
central nervous system, others may have a longer lasting hormonal basis.
For example, psychogenic anger can easily be controlled by
rationalization. The simplest technique here is to determine and avoid
stimuli that could generate negative emotion. On the other hand, hormonally based
depression may be harder to combat. Mild sadness can be combated with
exercise, caffeine, occupational techniques, etc. However, more violent
mood swings may have a genetic background and require
professional consultation or pharmacological intervention. A great deal of emotional life in modern
society is related to human interaction. As such, emotions can often be
influences by molding one's circle of contacts and modes of
communication. You can easily eliminate a great source of negative
emotions by simply avoiding interaction with individuals who seem to
have negative influence on your emotions and ways of thinking. When your
Mom used to say: "I do not like this new friend of yours", she
kept expressing a universal truth: people do strongly influence each other. Look for people who
will have positive influence on you. At the same time, never forget that you
should strive at having a positive influence on others! Again, positive
emotions beget positive emotions.

Your life philosophy will have a powerful impact on your emotions.
Neither striving at genius nor striving at happiness should determine
your philosophy. After all, you should not mold the truth to serve
arbitrary goals. However, I believe that helping people reach the truth
via promises of happiness or intellectual accomplishment is of no harm
as long as the means and the ends all are compatible; which I believe they are.

At the root of your philosophical choice will be the classic conflict between stoic
and epicurean trends in philosophy. 19th-century utilitarian Henry
Sidgwick construed the hedonistic paradox to demonstrate that seeking
happiness is a straight way to misery. Personal power guru Tony Robbins
justly suggests to condition yourself to love what you decide is best
for you to do. In other words, instead of living to be happy, you should
rather happily live up to your highest ideals. If you cross chemistry on
your pathway, rarely will you study it with enthusiasm as of the first
day. You will need to condition yourself to love the subject. Your
increasing understanding of chemistry is likely to contribute to this
new love, yet it is worth noting that all sciences are most
approachable from their historic perspective. This is the best way to
illustrate the fascinating human struggle with mystery. No wonder Dalton or Avogadro were
ready to devote their lives to the subject. Chemistry is fascinating if
you just learn the right way to look at it. A genius entrepreneur and inventor Dean Kamen
promotes his father's formula for success: Pick something you love
and make it your life's work. Do what is important and not what is easy.

Apart from being guided by reason rather than emotion, you need to be
aware that measuring your progress by accomplished goals is not always
the optimum strategy (even though this is exactly what all modern
corporations do). You may actually be able to get further if you derive
satisfaction from your little daily accomplishments. Do not wait for the
great trophy. Let the little good deed be its own reward. Once you reach
a higher level of satisfaction with little things, your brain may work
on a higher gear and carry you beyond your original target.

Some highly-driven young people set ambitious goals: earn $5 million
in 5 years. Seemingly such a goal could put you on a high alert and you
could hope to float towards the target on a good rush of adrenaline.
Interestingly, Bill Gates made similar vows and had succeeded. Although
many would like to attribute to him some carnivorous instincts that made
him win numerous skirmishes and battles, Bill Gates has always been a
genius visionary. His success derives from the strategy based on
understanding (most of the time) the future of technology, the
mechanics of competition and the cybernetics of management; not from his
predatory ambitions. After all, there are many wolves out there who get
nowhere. As we enter the Knowledge Age, aggressive strategies will pay
less and less. More and more, the brain power will be in demand, and
brain power feeds well on positive emotion. Small-steps good-night-sleep
philosophy serves as a good medium for breeding brain power. With a $5
million target on your mind, once you
miss it, or do not find yourself on the right
trajectory, your life can enter a frustrating path. Instead of
multiplying your strengths, you might slide a slippery slope of struggle
with your own emotions.

Your optimization algorithm should not set a numeric target in
conditions of insufficient information. If you set it too high, you will
experience frustration. If you set it too low, you will not get
motivated enough. Instead of optimizing for your goal, maximize the
results of your day using the criteria determined by the goal. This benefits the
mankind (you are very productive), it is also optimum for you: you get maximum
results/expectations ratio that powers a self-propagating spiral of
creativity.

A popular belief says that money, fame or luxury are the main factors
that drive young people. Famed psychologist Abraham Maslow disagreed. By
studying motivation in subjects ranging from monkeys to human geniuses, he
developed his widely quoted Hierarchy
of Needs with self-actualization at the very top of needs that come
to play in genius minds. To experimentally show the real source of
today's young man's positive experience,Dr Kennon
Sheldon of the University of Missouri refined Maslow's theories, and
then proved them accurate with an experiment. He asked university students to recall most satisfying
events in their life (see: What
makes people the happiest?). The students
derived most satisfaction from self-esteem,
relatedness (relationships with other people), autonomy (being in control) and
competence (being productive). They derived minimum satisfaction from popularity,
influence, money or luxury. Stoic philosophy is likely to help you capitalize on
those sources of internal harmony identified by Sheldon. Lack of internal peace might be one of the most
important factors that prevents people from reaching genius levels of
intellectual achievement.

Of positive emotions, passion and the rage to master count most.
However, these are highly elusive. Every parent who tried to sparkle passion in
his child knows that at times this seems like a losing battle. Few techniques
exists to efficiently spark passion. Adults are able to rationalize their
actions and generate psychogenic motivation. However, if a young individual
lacks passion, his development will suffer immensely. It may be highly valuable
to find a "passion hook" to influence a young man's action. If a
poorly motivated individual finds passion for computer games or Lego blocks or
collecting beer cans, he or she demonstrates his or her ability to act
passionately. The difficult job of an educator is to find a pathway towards
converting these passions into productive and educational activities. For
developing genius, the original motivation for learning and self-growth is of
lesser importance. It can be rational or purely emotional, based on high
aspirations or on greed, it can be religious, cultural or material. Whatever the
starting motor of change, once the change is underway, growth and continual
learning will help steer an individual towards universal truths.

Have a look at the summary below. Invite all positive emotions that help you
execute your grand plans. Love your work, people, and the world. Run away from
sources of negative emotion. Although ultimately rooted in ignorance, negative
emotion has been the source of war and conflict that dominated human history.
Newton's quarter-century battle with Leibnitz (see earlier) is an excellent
illustration of a destructive impact of negative emotions. Even the greatest genius can fall prey to
low-level emotion with nothing positive to come out in return except for yet
another lesson for future generations.

Human characteristics derived from emotions can be divided into those of
negative impact and those of positive impact. In addition, our ability to steer
and control emotions provides for the third class of characteristics:

Emotional control is the ability to make a constructive use of
one's emotional drives. It may be strongly rooted in prefrontal control and
rationality (superiority of reason over low-level drives), self-discipline
(impassive adherence to one's own resolutions), patience (absence of emotion
in face of adversity), and ability to delay gratification (i.e. being
motivated by positive emotions for long-term strategies)

Thomas Edison contributed greatly to our understanding of genius. On one
hand, he easily meets the strictest standards of genius. He still holds the record
of the total number of submitted patents (over
1000 of which 400 came in a single year). On the other hand, of the geniuses
discussed in this article, Edison seems to have been most visibly
self-analytical. Using his own experience, he formulated quite a number
of rules on how genius develops, including the immortal encouragement to
augmenting the mind with hard work: genius is 1% inspiration and 99%
perspiration. Edison's approach to creativity made a philosopher Alfred North Whitehead
proclaim in 1926: "The
greatest invention of the 19th century was the invention of the method
of invention, which has broken up
the foundations of the old civilization".

According to his own account, the root of Edison's genius can be
found in his self-education and in a warm family environment. As
for Darwin, loving motherly care was essential:
"My mother was
the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had some
one to live for, some one I must not disappoint". His tireless
work habits formed in childhood. He started losing the sense of hearing
early. His formal education lasted only three months, and he was not
considered bright at that time. He had problems with math. One
teacher even called him "addled". Few had noticed the
sure early sign of genius: Edison asked "too many" questions.
Child's curiosity is the basis of early learning. Kids who ask zillions
of questions learn faster than their reticent counterparts. They often
cause more trouble than the conforming ones, and consequently get lower
ratings from the teachers. Overactive kids get labeled with ADHD even
though a great deal of geniuses match the symptoms. In Edison's case,
his mother decided to take him out of school and teach him at home. He
develop a love for reading. At the age of 9 he got a book about
scientific experiments. He did all experiments in the book and became
interested in chemistry. His hearing disability helped him focus
entirely on his
experiments. As a result of his self-instruction, he developed a
deep-rooted contempt for formal schooling. He believed that schools only
focus on memorizing facts instead of developing highly applicable skills
and abstract rules of reasoning. Along the laws of memetics, his words
have often been quoted in a distorted form: "Don't just memorize
it. Reason it out". As a result, a false perception has taken
root: memorizing is wrong, reasoning is good. As discussed earlier in this
article, reasoning is not possible without memorizing the necessary
facts and rules needed for derivation. Edison definitely understood that
but his ideas were put into a misleading slogan of learning.
Memorization is more important to genius than the sheer brain power.
This comparative statement is justified by the fact that most of us are
born with sufficient brain power, but only few use it to develop high
quality knowledge rich in abstract rules of reasoning. Using the
language of this article,
Edison's statement was: schools provide knowledge that is poorly
applicable and poorly represented. Alas, in most cases, true until this day.

Another misconception born from distorting
Edison's statements is: learning by doing or by playing, as opposed to
memorization, is nearly a panacea for success at school. The truth is that some skills are
better learned "by doing" while others simply "by
understanding". Images of a dissected cadaver leave far more
permanent imprints in medical student's memories than a verbal
description of the same anatomical structures. Using mathematical
formulas for solving particular tasks is by far more efficient that just
memorizing them. Yet the cost of "doing" must be taken into
the account, too. Few advocate learning geography by traveling to all
remote corners of the world, or learning history solely via reading
voluminous source materials in Hebrew, Greek or Latin. What is essential
though, learning must be a pleasure to be effective, and should follow, as Edison put it, "the natural instincts of the human being".
Edison believed that the education he gained at home was an excellent
preparation for his future success in engineering. He was also acutely
aware of the limited perimeters of human brain to acquire knowledge as
well as the unlimited ocean of knowledge that is left to be uncovered by
the mankind: We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.

Asked about the most important factors of his success, Edison
replied: "hard work, stick-to-itiveness, and common sense".
We can translate it to the terminology used in this article to (see:
Components of genius):

common sense: learning and applying highly abstract rules of
general reasoning

Edison's genius could then be summarized as an obsession for solving
a specific problem, sticking to the problem for as long as it takes to
solve it, acquiring necessary knowledge (including new rules derived in
the process of reasoning), and thus acquiring "common sense"
that will help solve more problems in the future.

Nicola Tesla was a lesser know but possibly even a greater genius
than Edison himself. He was born an Orthodox Christian Serb in 1856 in today's
Croatia, which was then part of Austria-Hungary. His mind
conceived what could be one of the first visions of the Internet. First,
as a teenager, he envisaged a
global postal system based on hydraulic pipes. Later in life, he unsuccessfully
tried to convince J. P. Morgan to work on building a world brain-like
system of wireless communications to broadcast phone conversations,
texts, pictures, and music.

Unlike
Edison, Tesla received strong formal schooling and was at amazing ease
with math. Tesla arrived as a poor
immigrant to New York in 1884 only to discover to his disappointment
that, culturally, America was ages behind Europe. With a letter of
recommendation from Edison's European friend, Tesla was hired as a young
apprentice and got a job that was supposed to earn him $50,000. He
completed the task to Edison's instructions in several months but did not get his pay. Edison
explained that the huge dollar award was not what Tesla expected it to
be: "When you
become a full-fledged American you will appreciate an American joke".
Tesla quit disgusted.
This is how Tesla-Edison battle begun. Although Tesla's ideas were
considered superior, he was unable to convert them into a financial
success. Tesla was immensely creative and would always neglect the
business part of his activities. The neglect of less creative side of
life by inventive minds gave origin to the "Shoot the inventor"
phenomenon. Creative people are easy to "shoot" because
craving for creativity is an inherent feature of their brains that makes
them vulnerable. Creativity becomes more important than honors,
luxuries, money and other rewards. Tesla's alternating current approach was by far superior to Edison's stubborn
exploration of the direct current (Edison's stubbornness could be
excused by his prior sizeable investment in DC). Tesla arrived to America with some
designs ready in his head but Edison would not listen to Tesla's ideas. The AC-DC battle
was won by Tesla's brainchild, but he sold his patents early and earned
little. A rumor says that Tesla and Edison were supposed to be chosen to
share a Nobel prize in physics but Tesla declined to share the award
claiming that Edison is not scientific enough. They have never received
the prize. Tesla was also the early inventor of the radio but it was
Marconi who received the highly valuable patent and a Nobel Prize in
1909. Marconi's patent was reversed in 1943 when the US Supreme Court
upheld Tesla's earlier patent, but it was too late for Tesla himself. He
died a few months earlier. Tesla could have been more creative than
Edison but he was less efficient in carrying his battles for recognition
and financial awards. Edison and Marconi always wielded a substantial
advantage in contacts and connections. The last thirty years of Tesla's
life were severely damaged by the wounds he suffered in this unequal
struggle. Edison would also beat Tesla as a team player. Tesla's social
skills were inadequate in that respect. Like many highly creative
individuals, he preferred to work alone. His imperfect execution of his
own plans deprived him of the most prominent place in the history of
mankind.

One of Ronald Reagan's favorite sayings taken from Robert Woodruff
was
"there is no limit to what a man can accomplish if he does not
mind who gets the credit". However, Tesla could have completed
dozens of his unfinished ideas had he backed up his creative genius with
skills for choosing appropriate partners that would protect his work
from being overshadowed, stolen or forgotten. Tesla was also
slightly naive in a blind trust in justice. In 1904 he said about
Marconi: "He is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using
seventeen of my patents". The new economy of the 21st century seems
less ruthless than that of the late 19th century America. Today's bright minds
live in much less fear that their efforts will not be appreciated and rewarded.
Naturally, as many more geniuses are able to fulfill their potential,
they also face a much stiffer competition in the field. Our perception of
genius remains the same, we reserve the word to top 1% of the
population. However, the bar is being raised with each passing decade,
esp. with the advent of the new global economy based on the Internet.
Creative skills of the 19th century genius might not be as impressive in
today's highly educated population.

Interestingly, Tesla and Edison shared a remarkable ability to sleep
little and work a lot. Edison would go on for days taking only
occasional catnaps on a sofa in his office. While employed at Edison's,
Tesla working day would last from 10:30 am to 5 am. In this context, it
is important to remember that the actual demand for sleep depends on
individual characteristics and no creative individual should ever
contemplate cutting down on sleep in hope of reaching the intellectual
heights of the two geniuses. Least of all, should the alarm
clock be used to regulate sleep. If you happen to sleep little, wake
up naturally and feel refreshed, you may have more time for creativity.
But there is no reason to be alarmed if your natural sleep demand goes
beyond nine hours as long as you wake up refreshed. For comfort,
Einstein, whose theories Tesla contested, sported a healthy brain that
required nine hours of sleep for best performance.

Unlike Edison, Tesla preferred to make a meticulous mental picture of
his ideas and invention before proceeding with actual experimentation.
As a youth, he developed a remarkable ability to run computations in his
mind without the help of paper or a slide rule. On the other hand,
Edison would get down to trial-and-error "perspiration" as
soon as he had a nugget of an idea. Which approach is better? Definitely
you can save hours by being well-prepared for "perspiration";
however, the moment when you switch from thought to action will mostly
depend on the expected cost. Tesla might have had more ideas in his mind
but Edison have beaten him in practical applications

Recent years have demonstrated a tremendous potential of interdisciplinary
science. Findings from different fields can lay fallow for years due to poor
communication between scientists from different fields. Then a simple
association of known ideas produces a major breakthrough. Many geniuses of this
century complained that we, and scientists in particular, get overly
specialized. Norbert Wiener painfully noticed that if the difficulty of a
physiological problem is mathematical in essence, ten physiologists ignorant of
mathematics will get precisely as far as one physiologist ignorant of
mathematics, and no further. The consensus is that specialist knowledge is
necessary for scientific progress; however, there is no escape from
interdisciplinary communication and getting a broader education in all fields of
science that would make such communication possible. A future expert will need
to find an optimum balance between the specialist knowledge and general
knowledge. With popularization of techniques such as spaced repetition and
incremental reading, it should be possible to see the rebirth of the Renaissance
man. Rational control of the learning process should make it possible to combine
intense specialist exploration with well-rounded strengthening of one's overall
educational background. Lifelong learning is becoming a necessity that will
spread from intellectually most demanding professions to other fields of labor.
Rapid changes in technology demand a quick adaptation process via efficient
well-targeted learning. With tools such as SuperMemo, it should be possible to
cast your net wide for new knowledge and avoid the tunnel vision that might lead
you into a blind alley.

Accelerated learning is also a prescription for a real-time problem solving.
Once a problem to solve looms large, you can throw more knowledge at it. Overpower it
with incremental reading. This refers not only to problems related to your
profession. It can be anything from a technical problem with your computer to an unexpected health
problem in the family. With the access to the Internet, an amazing number of
problems can be solved by means of knowledge that is literally available at your
fingertips. Once things get hard to crack, you can methodically flood your
memory with new relevant information until new solutions start coming up. In the
end, as illustrated with many examples throughout this article, a single piece of information
stored in the human brain can change the course of history!

In incremental reading, you will often encounter material
that is difficult to understand. You will need to develop analytical skills that
will help you identify the reasons. If the culprit is the author, delete the
article. If you need to digest other pieces of your collection first, delay the
article. If you need more knowledge, delay the article and import more knowledge
that will be needed to boost understanding. Do not forget that some texts make an
inherently poor
material for incremental reading (e.g. descriptions of scientific
experiments, mathematical derivations, programming examples in source
code, case studies, etc.). In such cases, use a traditional thorough analysis methods,
summarize results of your analysis, and use SuperMemo only to keep track
of such summaries.

This is how you can approach complexity in incremental reading:

Start reading the article from the top. Once you find a difficult fragment, analyze it and
diagnose the reasons for your comprehension problems

If the rest of the article does not depend much on the difficult
fragment, keep on reading (at the bottom of the article you could
leave a "read again" note to indicate that it might make
sense to read the whole article again and return to the difficult fragment
later)

If the rest of the article cannot be understood without
understanding the difficult fragment choose one of the following:

if the fragment is hopelessly intricate and leaves no hope for
the future (e.g. because of wrong grammar, wording, formulation,
logic, etc.), delete the article and search for alternative
material

If you decide to postpone the article with Ctrl+J, decide
what new knowledge you will need before getting back to the difficult
fragment. List dictionary entries, encyclopedia articles, articles on
the net or library books that you will need to process before going
any further

Schedule the review of the new knowledge or try to search for it
immediately (e.g. by searching the net)

Estimate the earliest time when you hope you will be able to
understand the difficult article and use the appropriate interval with
Ctrl+J. If the article includes high priority knowledge, it is
always better to err on the safe side and provide a too early review

You must be born with a creative mind! False! Some kids indeed show
an incredible curiosity and rage to master. However, there are many
techniques that can help you multiply your creativity. Start off with the
Genius Checklist below. Once you ensure healthy and peaceful environment for
creative work, be sure you try incremental reading as the best way to (1)
quickly gain new knowledge and (2) boost your associational thinking and
creative output

If you miss childhood, your genius is lost! False! Human brain is plastic
by definition. In many fields of learning, childhood neglect is difficult to
recover later in life; however, training can always produce miracles. Young Jean
Jacques Rousseau lost his mother within a week of his birth. His
violent-tempered father encouraged reading but abandoned him at ten. His family found him
incompetent. He run away at sixteen and begun his adventure with philosophy
at the encouragement of somewhat disreputable Madame de Warens who become
his lover. One thing Rousseau was probably born with, however: curiosity.
He read Plutarch's Lives
in childhood, which indicates that this period has not been entirely lost.
Childhood is very important for growth, but if you lost it, you can still
catch up in many areas with intense training

Do not memorize!False! You can track this belief back to
Rousseau's novel ȭile. Its fallacy comes from the fact
that many sources fail to delineate the full spectrum of knowledge
applicability from dry useless facts to highly abstract reasoning rules.
Understanding, thinking, problem solving, creativity, etc. are all based on
knowledge. This rule should rather be formulated as: Knowledge selection
is critical for success in learning. The correct and non pejorative
definition of the word memorize is to: "commit knowledge to
memory". Along this definition, I exclaim: Do memorize! Just make a
smart selection of things to learn. A recent report on Japanese schools
stated an overemphasis on memorizing and a deficit in promoting creativity.
However, solutions proposed for such an imbalance are often quite zany (e.g.
spending a substantial proportion of school time on playing with colorful
sheets of paper for the sake of creativity). The report lead to a media buzz
that produced a harmful misnomer equating memorizing with cramming. I hear
again and again that SuperMemo is just a tool for cramming. See: Smart and
dumb learning for a discussion and examples

Proliferation of geniuses is a threat to humanity.False! Most
of the good things that surround us are a product of nature, love, or human genius.
It is true that the output of genius minds is often used for evil purposes;
however, halting genius would be equivalent to halting or reversing the
global progress. Few would advocate a return to pre-print Middle Ages or voluptuous
times of the Roman Empire. Instead, we should rather proliferate genius and
employ innovative minds to ensuring future harmonious, sustained, and
measured progress of humanity

If you do something stupid, so are you!False! Human brain
is an imperfectly programmed machine. It never stops learning and verifying
its errors. Its knowledge base is painfully limited. The same brain may be able
to disentangle the complexities of the string theory and then slip on simple
sums. We measure genius by its top achievements, not by the lack of failures. It may be an enticing media tidbit to see the US Vice-President
fail to spell the word potato; however, the blame should rather be
put on the irregular spelling of English (when I typed potato here in my word processor, I
did see the ominous red wavy underline again). The misspelled word might actually indicate the politician
who would
rather spend his time on solving the problems of the nation rather than
waste time on cramming thousands of spelling patterns of English. If you do a very dumb thing, do
not blame it on your mental powers. Actually, one of central characteristics
of geniuses is self-confidence. Geniuses do silly things and often go around
in circles. What makes them succeed in the end is self-confidence and the unshaken belief in the solvability of problems

Geniuses do not forget things! False! Genius brains are made of the
same substance as average ones. Consequently, their memories are subject to
exactly the same laws of forgetting. All knowledge in the human brain
declines along a negatively exponential curve. Forgetting is as massive in a
genius mind as it is in any other. The best tools against forgetting are (1)
good knowledge representation (e.g. mnemonic techniques) and (2) review
(based on active recall and spaced
repetition). Geniuses may hold an advantage by developing powerful
representation skills that make learning much easier. They often develop
those skills early and without a conscious effort. However, the science of
mnemonics is well developed and you can see a dramatic difference in your
knowledge representation skills after a week-long course. With help of SuperMemo, you can also solve the problem of forgetting by optimizing the
review and detecting your weak spots in knowledge representation (see: knowledge
leeches). In addition, a welcome side-effect of using SuperMemo is the subconscious
increase in your mnemonic powers. In other words, mnemonic techniques and
SuperMemo can help you forget about forgetting. Paradoxically, absent-mindedness is also
often associated with genius. The proverbial absent-minded professor indeed
tends to forget things by focusing on what is important and neglecting minor
things in life. The current location of car keys is in a longer perspective
by far less important than the newest inspiration on developing the theory
of everything. Actually, due to their absent-mindedness geniuses should be
banned from driving! Their intense focus on a problem to solve may pose
danger to others. If you tend to forget little things, this may actually be
an indication of your strong creative focus. Use MS Outlook's Calendar to free your memory and your mind from worrying about details.
You can also use SuperMemo
tasklists if the number of tasks is by far higher than your ability to
execute them

Geniuses sleep little! False! When looking at Edison and
Tesla it is easy to believe that cutting down on sleep does not seem to
pose a problem in creative achievement. Those who try to work creatively in
conditions of sleep deprivation
will quickly discover though that fresh mind is by far more important than
those 2-3 hours one can save by sleeping less. A less visible side effect of
sleep deprivation is the effect on memory consolidation and creativity
in the long term. Lack of sleep hampers remembering. It also prevents
creative associations built during sleep. It is not true that geniuses sleep less. For example,
Einstein admitted that he would work best if he got a solid nine-hours block
of sleep. The
difference between Edison and Einstein could be a combination of physiology
and working mode. Edison would spend hours on manual experiments,
which may involve less demand for sleep as compared with highly abstract
reasoning. Edison also used to run his own business affairs that could add some
adrenaline to affect the sleep physiology. Apart from the difference in the
working mode, the sleep physiology can differ between individual. In an extreme case, it is possible that Einstein's brain was
"slower" in sleep and required more time to do the same job. His
sleep could also include a larger proportion of non-optimizing stages (i.e.
stages that are likely to act as transition between physiologically most
important Stage 4 NREM and REM sleep). Whatever the underlying cause, you
should follow your natural sleep demand and never cut down on sleep

Early to ripe, early to rot! False! Terman Study contradicts this claim. See the section devoted to William James Sidis
for a discussion

You need a degree! False! Edison got only 3 months of formal
schooling. Lincoln spent less than a year in school. Benjamin Franklin's
formal education ended when he was 10. Graham Bell was also
mostly family trained and self-taught. Steve
Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Dean Kamen, and Bill Gates were
all college drop-outs. If you have a strong personality and an unswerving
drive for self-improvement, in the era of the Internet, you may actually
gain more knowledge on your own as long as you choose a field that does not
require expensive labs, hands-on experience, close social interaction, etc..
Universities tend to be inefficient and wasteful with outdated teaching
methodology. However, if you do it on your own, you always have to keep in
mind that you need to learn what is important; not what is easy or just
interesting. Universities are still hard to beat in forcing you to learn
things that are hard but important. Secondly, universities are a great
source of inspiring human interaction. If your social skills are poor or you
find it hard to meet new people on-line, you should at least experiment with
the traditional schooling system. Naturally, if your motivation and self-discipline are not of
the highest mark, going through the formal system of education may be a must

Genius can be evil! False! Evil, by definition, is stupid.
One can show genius skills in a narrow field and still be an evil person, but an
evil human being does not
deserve a title of a true genius if his or her wisdom does not reach beyond
the
narrow field of specialization. This is why all true geniuses are deeply
concerned with the future of humanity. Mistakenly, some use Hitler as an example of
an evil
genius quoting the efficiency of the holocaust machine, and some of his
early political and economic successes. Hitler grew in power not by his genius but
by his anger. He was a byproduct of the Treaty of Versailles and ensuing
discontent and nationalism among German population. The truth about Hitler is illustrated by
the utter failure of his plans, his philosophy, and his dreams. The
holocaust was not powered by anything but hate that spread far beyond the
mind of one evil man. Last but not least, the second law of thermodynamics
should teach everyone that there is nothing genius about destruction. Your PC
is an incredible product of the collective human genius, yet it takes a hammer and an
untrained hand to terminate its usability.

Be unique! This boosts creativity! False! The relationship between
uniqueness and creativity is reverse. It is true that many creative people
are unique or strange in behavior. This comes from their creative way of
looking at things and unwillingness to stick to those form of tradition that
defy reason. By no means an effort towards uniqueness will boost creativity.
It is true that Einstein smoked a pipe, but it does not mean that you will
be more of a genius if you take on smoking a pipe. If Bill Gates comes to
meet you in a crumpled old shirt, it is because he values comfort and his
own time more than canons and conventions. Crumpled shirts do not augment
mental powers. David Boise may come to the US
Supreme Court in sneakers because these do less damage to his circulation
and his course of thought. Guys at Yahoo sleep in their offices and walk
around the company barefooted. Only because that is ergonomic. Wozniak and
Jobs started the company in a garage hoping to follow the footsteps of
Hewlett and Packard. Better in a garage than not at all. This all does not mean that if you start
bare-footed in a garage you stand a better chance for success in the dot-com
economy. Nor will it help if you paint your hair green. Unless, naturally,
the green color will have some positive and tangible effect on your psyche,
your boss, your wife or your bank clerk. Creative
people look strange or unique, but that is not by design! Originality does not carry any value in itself and striving for
it is wasteful. Whole philosophies have been built on the concept of
the unique value of strong individual with not-so-good outcome for the
mankind

TV makes you stupid! False! TV or radio can be
harmful if you are unable to control what you watch or listen, or if you are
unable to optimize the proportion of your time spent on broadcasts.
Otherwise, TV is still hard to match in its ability to present to you a
pre-selected and emphatically graphic video material for the purposes of
education or getting informed. Video education based on the material from
reputable channels may be the most efficient form of tutor-less education.
Rather than getting drawn into Jerry Springer or Survivor, you can get a
quick lecture on evolution, history of the Ottoman Empire or Islamic
Revolution in Iran from the Discovery Channel, BBC World or CNN. Do you know
that CNN has spent $12
million to produce their 24-part series "Cold War"? As I
write these words, BBC
World is running an excellent 26-part "People's Century". Huge production budgets have been converted
here into a superb
video-documentary that will give you the best rate of knowledge and inspiration per minute. The
following rules can help you avoid potential damage of television to
your creative work:

choose the right channel and programming in advance. Your decision
should be conscious rather than spontaneous. Do not let emotions or
curiosity override your true needs for information and learning

use a VCR to make sure you can watch the material at designed time. By
no means should TV schedule affect your own schedule. Neither should TV
schedule determine what you watch and learn. VCR will also help you fast forward
over advertising and less
relevant material

choose the appropriate timing. Watching TV is by far less demanding to
your brain than, for example, learning with SuperMemo.
This is why you could choose the timing where your brain is less alert,
e.g. after meals or before sleep (remember to avoid
emotionally-charged content before sleep)

to boost positive results, you could also add some priority to foreign
language channels to add some foreign language
learning. If English is your second language, you should actually give
English channels a strong preference due to the fact that no creative
mind can truly benefit of the Knowledge Age without a fluent command of
English

Curiosity killed the cat! False! Forget this proverbial eye-wash.
Even in the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica
rationalized curiosity by noticing that the vice of curiosity cannot be
about intellective knowledge (Summa
Theologica : Question
167). As long as you stay within the boundaries
of politeness, live by a better proverb: Curiosity is your pass to the
kingdom of knowledge

George W. Bush won't make a good president! False! Do not be belied
by W's poor knowledge of foreign leaders or his
not-so-excellent command of English. Both are indeed indicative of his
learning priorities and will somehow affect his leadership. However, despite
the appearances, presidency is a collective effort and being a genius of
social skills, delegation of duty or diplomacy may be equally or more
important. The truth about Bush jr. will only come out after his
presidency, and its true historical impact can only be evaluated decades
later. Someone has noticed that knowledgeable Al Gore might show a tendency
to be more autocratic with "I know better" attitude.
Knowledge is indispensable to a great leader but is not the only factor.
Future will tell (see FAQ)

To summarize and solidify the formula for genius advocated by this article, I
list below the most important factors underlying brain power. I sorted these factors so that
to begin with those that are most likely to be the stumbling blocks on your own road to genius. The categories inevitably overlap. For
example, all the first three preconditions for genius are strongly related:
stresslessness, good sleep and self-discipline, and may provide the key to
answering why we are not a planet of geniuses. I listed individual points separately on the
basis of their ability to motivate your or inspire to improve your own
attitudes, behaviors and self-growth techniques. Before you start reading,
however, remember what Herbert Simon said about genius: it takes about ten years
to develop it. Not only will you have to meet all the criteria listed below, but
you will yet need lots of patience before you climb your summit!

Eliminate stress: Stress is understood here as rapid change
resulting in an increase in stress hormones (catecholamines, ACTH, cortisol,
etc.). Stressful change can come from conflict, illness, death of a relative or unemployment.
Stress can also result from seemingly happy events such as a marriage or a slap-dash vacation. Please do not
fail to read: The
Medical Basis of Stress. A simple test here is to make sure that creative problems circulate in
your mind while you are brushing your teeth. You will fail the test if
instead of creative thinking you are preoccupied with problems at work or in
the family. Stress will cut
down your creative efficiency manifold if it takes your mind away from
problem solving. Most of all, however, it will affect your self-discipline: another
cornerstone of genius. In addition, sustained
stress will result in hypercortisolism, overactivity of the sympathetic
system, and a resulting inhibition of the neural growth and memory
consolidation

Sleep: Make sure you always get as much quality sleep as your brain
requires. The simplest first step: throw away your alarm clock! Lack of sleep
delivers a quadruple whammy: (1) it prevents memory consolidation, (2) it eliminates
memory optimization responsible for valuable associations, (3) it makes you tired and unwilling of mental
effort, and (4) it undermines your self-discipline.
Please read: Good sleep for good learning

Self-discipline: Lack of self-discipline aggravated by stress and
lack of sleep is the number one cause of reduced productivity worldwide. In
essence, it explains why capitalism appears to be economically superior to
communism today. If
you develop self-discipline habits early, your life is likely to take an
entirely different course. If you believe you are lacking in this fields,
try the following exercise: as soon as an activity comes to your mind that
you really are unwilling to do, do it. Your rational brain must be the
master of your body, not the other way around. Stand over a pool of cold
water. Do you hate jumping in? The more you hate it, the sooner you should
jump. And in the end you will love it. Cold shower is a minor inconvenience
once you experience the volitional power of the brain. You need to master
the skill of a
perfect execution of your own plans. The more precise your plan, the harder it is to
execute, yet the most tangible the results. Learn to delay gratification. If
you focus on your long-term goal, your daily inconveniences will by far be
more bearable. A strenuous quest towards the goal is the best reward to a genius mind.
Minor awards of laziness do not befit a true genius. Think of
self-discipline daily. Even strongest minds can relax it all too easily.
Remember about stress and sleep (two previous points). Stress and sleepiness
are chief factors that undermine self-discipline

Learn day and night: Knowledge is the substance you convert to
ideas. Although it is possible to learn in stress and with sleep deficit,
learning is listed here behind stress, sleep and self-discipline. This is
because humans exhibit inborn curiosity that makes them crave for learning.
Watching TV and reading gutter press also comes from the the same need for
learning. Most people understand the importance of learning but are
prevented from executing their plans due to stress or lack of sleep or lack
of self-discipline. To breed genius, your whole life should revolve around
learning. You should use every single and slightest opportunity to learn
something new. This can be Einstein's biography or a talk with a homeless
junkie. Read, talk, watch, surf, and keep on thinking. Do not avoid hard subjects (e.g. mathematics). Mold your learning strictly to your
creative needs, but do not fail to explore a wide range of topics. Touch all
the bases! Avoid tunnel vision. Remember that your success in learning will
require appropriate knowledge
representation and timing of review
(as in SuperMemo). Lacking university education? Never mind. Look at Edison, Lincoln, or Leibnitz to
see the power of self-instruction. See: Formula
for success in learning

Abstract knowledge: except for lots of learning, you will need to
pay attention to the quality of knowledge and its abstract applicability.
You cannot just memorize thousands of facts. You have to consciously explore
areas such as logic, probability, statistics, game theory, decision theory, computing
sciences, optimization, as
well as other branches of mathematics and other sciences. You have to
develop a love for logical thinking, scientific method and skepticism. Even if you are a movie critic, you
will still need a quality logic to frame
your judgment. Remember that all knowledge is volatile and may be subject to
falsification at any time. Keep your mind open to new truths even if they
seem to turn your present vision of the world upside down. See: Smart and dumb learning

Knowledge representation: the main thing that makes genius brains
stand out is their ability to store quality knowledge in a way that is easy
to remember and easy to use. Genius brains can see complex things in a
simple form. They look at the same text or picture and see a dozen times
more than an average individual. An average reader will say: "I
understand, so what?". A genius reader will say: "Eureka!"
and list several applications of the just acquired piece of knowledge.
Geniuses simplify while learning. They build abstract models. They develop abstract
languages for representing knowledge. Those representation skills can also
be developed by training. Have you ever tried to learn Kanji (Japanese language
symbols)? If you see Kanji as a tangle of confused sticks, you are a typical
beginner. With time; however, Kanji symbols should begin to sing to you and
talk to you in their own language. Once you pass the first few hundred, the next
thousand should go smoothly. The same happens if you learn 20x20
multiplication table. With time you learn simple tricks for running simple
and repetitive calculations. Instead of memorizing 20x20 combinations, you
limit yourself to a standard 10x10 table (just 25% of all combinations) and
add to this a few rules for manipulating numbers in your working memory. The
best way to develop good representation is to (1) understand the way the
memory works (see: 20 rules of formulating
knowledge), (2) consciously
modify representations in the learning process (e.g. reediting items in
SuperMemo) and (3) working on abstract knowledge (the more you learn the
easier it becomes). If you encounter a difficult problem in incremental
reading, postpone it. With luck, some other source or article will hand down
a better representation that will better nourish your understanding. For
example, the brain
metaphor presented in this article is supposed to simplify the
representation of genius. Hopefully, it should demystify genius by comparing
it to a well-programmed computer. In the end, it should encourage your to
start programming (your own brain). See also: Dealing with complexity in
SuperMemo

Health: take an obsessive care about your health! Keep your blood pressure down (high blood pressure
damages your brain), do not abuse alcohol
(any dose that visibly affects your mental performance may be poisonous to
your nervous tissue), use medication only when absolutely necessary, forget
smoking or illicit drugs, exercise,
learn medical sciences!!! Your brain is a highly sensitive organ that needs a
healthy environment to operate in. Health and understanding the biological needs of
your brain may dramatically
affect your performance in the long run

Avoid negative emotions: learn to control and eliminate
negative emotions that blur your mind and long-term vision. The only
acceptable feeling towards others should be love, compassion, admiration,
inspiration, and other positives. If other not-so-nice feelings tend to creep in, emigrate into your creative world.
Don't get swayed or discouraged by the nasty things in life. Ride on
regardless. See: Negative
and positive emotions

Optimism and patience: drive your life into the optimistic
track! Do what you love and develop a strong sense of purpose. Optimism and
patience rooted in stoic philosophy are critical for your brain to
peacefully engage in a creative effort. Optimism has a hormonal basis and as
such can be manipulated and enhanced. Although, it is more than just
stresslessness, you will find lots of inspiration in: The
Medical Basis of Stress

Positive stimulation: things that you love doing should find a
place in your schedule. Due to its intimate and direct impact on the reward
system, efficient learning belongs to the best sources of
positive experience; however, to many it can also be a drudgery. For
counterbalance you need to find time for highly enjoyable activities that
will widen your enthusiasm for living in general. Be it music,
art, movies, sports, religion, love, etc.

Clear goal: even the smartest and the most knowledgeable brain does not
deserve the status of genius if it lives in a vacuum. If you switch your
focus and interests indefinitely, you may end up with little creative output
to show for your talents. Establishing a clear goal for your life should be
your first priority. If you are very young and still do not understand
yourself or the surrounding world, you can safely commit yourself to enhanced learning.
Until your goals crystallize, learning itself may be your temporary goal.
However, you cannot keep on learning for the learning sake indefinitely. At
some point you need to focus on a big goal and your learning should be
focused on achieving that goal. Choose your goal by a combination of your
own talents and its utilitarian impact. What do you think is the best thing
you could do to make the world a better place? If you know it, make it your
obsession. The greatest minds in history tended to
focus intensely on a single problem and neglect all minor things of life.
Young Bill Gates would sleep under his desk because he did not want to waste
time on coming back home. David Boise, Al Gore's star lawyer, would live in
a dirty house and run in worn-out suits to economize more time on getting
prepared for his cases. Lincoln would dress nicely only to please his wife. Einstein would become entirely irresponsive to the
outside world once he focused on his relativistic ideas. Edison would work
for days nearly without sleep. Andy Grove of Intel stated justly: "Only paranoid survive!".
You need a clear goal and you need to pursue
it obsessively. As for Gates and Edison, remember that quality sleep was
listed second on this checklist

Rational optimization: Your goal can be great but what if a greater
goal looms on the horizon? First of all, your ultimate goal should be
ultimate. If it is not, you must generalize your hierarchy of value until
you reach the root of human existence to answer what lives at the end of the
infinite chain of whys. However, your subgoals can be plastic. To be sure
you do not fall into Babbage-Tesla-Nelson trap
of grandeur design and endless improvement, your decisions must be purely rational and
probabilistic. Remember Cray? He would give up bells and whistles only to be the
first with a workable solution. If the expected payoff of the new goal is greater than that
of the former goal, switch it. Otherwise persist even though your emotions
may tell you that the new thing seems so much bigger

Balance learning and productivity: On one hand, this checklist asks
you to work hard to achieve your goals. On the other, it asks you to spend
your whole life on learning. Naturally, you need to find an optimum balance
between learning and productive creativity. This is what Steven Covey calls P/PC ratio (i.e. the ratio of
effort put into production as opposed to developing the production capacity). A
simple rule of thumb is: start with allocating your time fifty-fifty to
learning and creativity. Gradually, you will see where the bottlenecks
develop and you can change your allocation (if you use SuperMemo 2004, Tools
: Plan can help you stick to the chosen proportion). Each time you swing away from
the optimum, your optimum output will be diminished. Your genius cannot be
like a pink Cadillac in a glass showcase. Neither can you neglect developing
genius while pursuing your goals

Ambition, motivation, energy and persistence: the internal drive
and the rage to master are the precondition of a true genius. Only these
will make it possible to build extensive expertise and skills. The bad news
is that those factors are strongly genetic. The good news is that you are
probably already sufficiently endowed: after all you arrived that far
digging into this lengthy article. Even the mere fact that you got down to reading is a big
plus. See: Personality factor

Balance focus and generality - One one hand, this checklist asks
you to specialize in a narrow area in which you can become number one in the
world. On the other, it asks you to never neglect wide multi-disciplinary
learning. Naturally you need to balance the two, and its all intermediary
forms. Again, you can try to cut your learning time in
half and spend half of your time of specialist knowledge and half on general
learning. Then you can make further subdivisions and optimize time
allocation for individual subjects, sub-subjects and sub-sub-subjects. By
far the
best way to effectively prioritize your learning is to use incremental
reading. Each time you discover painful gaps in knowledge, you can toss
in more material to incremental reading. Incremental reading puts no limit
on how much material you can import into the learning process and it makes
it possible to spend only as much time on learning as you can afford. You
cannot overload incremental reading. If you add more biology, all other
subjects will proportionally be compressed in priority. This also makes sure
that you do not break down under a load of temporary fad. Whatever subjects
declines in priority, it can be rescheduled (i.e. reduced in priority) or
deleted. Reprioritization is actually done as you go with learning. In
incremental reading, you nearly do
not need to allocate time for planning the learning process. Your
prioritization can go concurrently with the learning process. You will not
belong to those people who lose their chance for success by spreading it all
too thin. Neither will you develop tunnel vision. With consciously controlled incremental reading, you
will easily find an optimum balance between specialization and the big
picture and all that falls in-between

Life philosophy - the way you look at the world and your most basic
beliefs will strongly affect your ability to develop a genius mind.
Particular political affiliations or religious convictions are of lesser
concern as long as these do not interfere much with points on this
checklist. Your views will crystallize along the genius itself. Your reason
will be your best judge. However, two factors come to my mind as worth
mentioning in this context. They both can be likened to always seeing the
glass half-full:

measure the day: measure your progress by your daily effort
and not the distance remaining to the ultimate goal. Only with this paradoxical approach will you
be able to follow the optimum trajectory. For one, today's effort is
more tangible than the tiny difference a day often makes on your road.
Productivity is the most
satisfying feeling that will drive you to your greatest heights.
Sensing productivity may be the most important positive emotion of a
creative mind. As long as you derive your primary satisfaction
from a perfect execution of your plans that lead to the big goal, your
motivation will remain high and trajectory correct. Occasionally, your
genius may end up unfulfilled as it was with Charles Babbage's
differential machine or Ted Nelson's Xanadu. But this is no excuse for
not trying

forget about money: if you follow the money trail, you will
in part optimize
against creativity! Money-oriented optimization, at least in today's
world, will prevent you from developing a clear creative focus. Very few true geniuses were
motivated by money. Most were motivated by utilitarian goals or for simply being the best in their field. Of geniuses
listed in this article, none were motivated by money (as for Gutenberg, we
know too little to judge). You need to bend your creativity down to
earth only as much as to ensure this checklist is left untouched (esp.
in points related to health, stress, sleep and time for creative
effort). For comfort you should keep in mind that Bill
Gates'es of the future will be recruited from the creative elite. All
nations work in concert to develop planetary mechanisms for
rewarding geniuses for their invaluable effort. Genius's sole job
and responsibility is
to create and contribute value

Incremental reading: incremental reading is a new idea you may have
never heard of. It makes it possible to read thousands articles at the same
time (see: Incremental reading).
I started using incremental reading only 1.5 years ago. However, it has
already become the key component of my daily schedule, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to all creative people.
For a thorough description of incremental reading see: Devouring knowledge.
It may take you up to a
month to learn the most important skills of incremental reading but the
benefits are immense:

dramatically increasing the speed of learning

optimizing the structure of knowledge in your mind in terms of
coherence, integrity and representation

maximizing memory consolidation while you focus on knowledge
representation

prioritizing the acquisition of knowledge in various fields as well
as fine-tuning the balance between specialization and general
knowledge

overcoming the boredom factor in digesting complex material

minimizing the stress related to information overload and making
learning fun

Write down new ideas: never trust your memory to keep your new
ideas. Once you come up
with an idea, write it down instantly. Write it down even then when it is
only a hint on how to solve a problem. Write it down if you are not sure if
it is correct. You cannot predict how your hint or a shadow of an idea will
affect your future thinking. If the idea seems weak, so is its memory trace. Charles
Babbage said: Write down the thoughts of the
moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable. Graham
Bell kept meticulous notes of his ideas that collectively could help Bell
break the Edison's patent record. Botvinnik kept meticulous notes of his
chess game ideas and encouraged his students to follow the same practice.
Bohr's office had a wall with narrow drawer in which he would keep multiple
manuscripts in various stages of preparation for publication. He would not
hurry the creative process, but would always want to preserve the current
state of thinking. Today, the best way to follow Bell and Bohr is to write down nuggets of ideas
straight into the incremental reading process. Once you write down an idea,
describe all associations of the moment. Gradually, in the incremental
review process, you will reanalyze individual pieces, build upon them, consolidate,
enhance with new knowledge, etc. In the process of incremental reading, add new ideas to
topics that sparked them. This will also help you understand the impact of
associational thinking and incremental reading on creativity

Brainstorming: discuss great ideas with your colleagues: in a group
or in relaxed one-to-one encounters. Do it in a park or by the lakeside.
Avoid distracting or stressful surroundings such as offices, crowded places, etc. Learn
brainstorming techniques. You will find lots of materials on the net or at Amazon.com

Time-management: learn time-management techniques to maximize the
efficiency with which you use your time. If you double the time spent on
creative activities, you can increase your lifetime output manifold. Your
efficiency may not double due to the fatigue factor, but the results of
creative output tend to cumulate, consolidate, and self-amplify in time. Tesla's AC patents
were second most valuable to that of the phone and Tesla's speed here could
have ensured lifetime creative security had he not sold the patents early.
His early invention provided him with material for numerous ideas later in
life. Creativity is a great investment that carries a huge interest that
will produce a snowballing effect throughout your life. To enhance your time-management skills, start from making an exact record of your work
in a couple of exemplary days. See how much times goes to waste or to
low-priority activities. If you have never done such an exercise before, you
are bound to be surprised with the amount of hidden potential. Time
management will release that potential. Use software such as MS Outlook to
scrupulously schedule and prioritize your tasks. Learn to use e-mail instead
of a phone or a car. Use tasklists
in SuperMemo to manage unmanageably long lists of tasks and ideas. Use Above&Beyond
software to dynamically manage your schedule. Regular and repetitive schedule works
best for creativity. If you can afford a repetitive schedule, Tools
: Plan in SuperMemo will be of great help in optimizing the realistic
allocation of time to individual activities in proportion to their priority. You will find lots of materials
about time management on the net or at Amazon.com

Study great people: few things are as inspiring as the lives of the
greatest individuals that have walked the planet. Look for strategies that
could be helpful in your own effort

Study yourself: try to document how you got your best ideas in the
past, and what serves your brain best. Most of all focus, you should focus
on your optimum working environment, mental
state, and the methodology

Grow social skills: do not neglect skills needed to interact with
other people! Teamwork and cooperation can produce miracles. By alienating people you may block your
ideas from surfacing. Make friends, and avoid bad lot. Listen to advice but
politely refuse to follow it if you disagree. Never let other people
dominate your path in any other way than through a superior advice. Good
people are often driven by their nose as others abuse their politeness.
Learn to say "No"

Slug it out: if you need to solve a hard problem, allocate many
hours to the goal. For a period of time, try to forget about the whole world. Toss lots of
new inspirational knowledge to incremental reading. Slug it out as much as
you can, and then sleep over it. Learn, think, create, sleep, learn, think,
create, sleep until the problem is solved. Remember that your memories are
reorganized during sleep. This is why you will need plenty of sleep at the
time of high creative effort. Most likely, on one beautiful day, you will wake up
with an idea ready for consumption in your half-awoken mind. It is only the
matter of choosing the right problem for your agenda. The greatest
scientists and inventors had a good nose for spotting solvable problems. If
the problem is solvable with present means, slugging it out in a smart way
will produce a satisfactory outcome

Warm family: to perpetuate genius,
please provide the best and most inspiring environment to your own kids.
Parental attention is highly correlated with future young man's
achievements. History of the greatest minds shows that loving, caring, inspiring, and warm
family was the key to developing brains that change the world (see: Edison,
Darwin, Wozniak)

The shortest synthesis of the above 25 rules is expressed by the point
suggesting you work on gaining highly abstract knowledge. All the above rules
form criteria for decision making, and are highly abstract and highly
applicable to shaping your behavior from minute to minute. These rules can be
evoked dozens of times during the course of a single day: either as guidance for
decision-making or implicitly as part of your schedule, automatic behavior, or
ground for more precise rules of conduct. Even at this moment some of the rules
could kick in. For example, if it is late in the night and are you sleepy, stop
reading this article, go to sleep, and come back tomorrow. If you cannot focus on reading due
to high levels of stress, try to resolve the stressful situation first, or work
on stress management (e.g. go for a 30-minute jogging). If you have an important
exam tomorrow that could cost you a year, invoke self-discipline rule and stick
to your high-level resolutions first, etc.

In short, genius develops over years of daily remolding of your neural
connections. Work hard, make it smart and be patient: Rome was not built in a day

Modern education based on SuperMemo
- this text written in 1990 as part of my Master's Thesis claims that
training based on spaced repetition can enhance creativity. The controversy
it sparked was among the factors that lead me to writing the presented text